Also check out: To the Love of My Life: It’s Time to Let You Go.

And: Why We keep Choosing Emotionally Depriving Romantic Relationships.

~

“I suggest you love like love’s no loss.”

These words hit me today.

It’s from a song called “Waves Know Shores.” Originally by James Blake, but the breathtaking version I heard today was by The Vernon Spring. It’s a beautiful melancholic piano piece, and these words are spoken in the end, almost as if that’s the arrival point after a long and arduous journey exploring the pain of an unspoken grief.

Poetry speaks deeply to me. Maybe this is where my love for words began. Poetry disguised in the most subtle ways in songs you only find in the strangest times and darkest hours.

With those words today, I found myself sitting with a feeling of sadness and comfort all at once. A kind of duality I’m familiar with. The song was on repeat, it felt like my great great grandmother came down from the heavens, and sat down with me over a cup of tea, and that’s all she had to say to me. It felt like a message wrapped in a warm blanket saying:

Child, take it easy. Love again. It won’t hurt next time.

The pain of love and loss may have been intense in the past, but look at love now with fresh eyes. Knowing that your eyes are now seeing the world in a more beautiful and real way, because they’ve held tears that bathed them to cleanse your vision. Your eyes welled up many times, but remember that is far more noble than keeping them shut. Your tears have built bridges between your heart and how you see the world. Remind yourself how valuable this is.

Don’t look at love anymore through the eyes of grief. You didn’t lose. You shed leaves like a tree moving onto a new season. Connect with your natural rhythm and cycle, the world is showing you how it’s done everyday. Your body, the moon, the tides—all teachers. Transitions are uncomfortable sometimes, most times. But you and me are learning everyday to connect the dots, bridge the gaps, and learn what it’s like to become one with natural living. It takes time. Be patient.

I’ll tell you one thing, and take this to bed with you tonight. Let it slowly unravel the tight mesh around your heart, like a fish breaking free and returning wounded into the ocean, slowly finding a new current again. Feel the rush of the crisp waters all around you, and the freedom you have right now in this vast open space where you belong. Wake up with this freedom.

My child,

I suggest you love like love’s no loss.