How to Become the Love You Want To Receive

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I am an empath. I feel deeply, I cry when other people hurt, I delight in others’ happiness.

My whole life, the world has whispered to me that I am either not enough, or too much.

At times I may have listened, but I will always refuse to believe. Because if you let it, this world will douse the flames of your playful loving heart.

I haven’t always been shown love and kindness. Adolescence was riddled with experiences and feelings of neglect, abandonment, and abuse. 

But I have refused, and continue to refuse each day, to become the people who have hurt me.

I am grateful for everyone I’ve ever met. Everyone we meet, even think of, is a teacher. All people come into our lives for our good, with the potential to leave us better than before, if we look for the lessons that we can learn.

And sometimes someone’s job was just to teach you what you never want to become.

At times I’ve been told that I love too much. On special fleeting occasions, there have been certain people, that the moment I met them an explosion took place in the walls of my heart. Suddenly a new room appeared with their name on it. It was an uncontrollable chemical and spiritual reaction. My eyes were simply opened to the stunning beauty of another soul in front of me, and I couldn’t “un-see” it even if I tried.

And with this knowledge of beauty and light, love poured from my heart to theirs.

Some of the best friendships, and deepest romantic relationships in my life have begun this way. But also, some of the most uncomfortable and awkward situations have come from this occurrence as well. Love pouring from my heart was met with rejection, coldness, and the most painful word of all: apathy.

They say “it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so deeply.” Whoever “they” might be, really understands what it’s like to have my heart.

At any given moment, there are only two human emotions we truly are experiencing. Love or fear. People who believe they are incapable of love are living in a world deeply rooted in fear.

People who believe they are being loved “too much, too soon” are living in a reality of fear that they are unworthy of love. 

And so when uncontainable love is unreciprocated, I do not falter.

Maybe I give that love differently, maybe I love from afar, but unconditional love is unceasing. Love says “Thank you, I forgive you, please forgive me too.”

There should be no shame associated with love. Yet there is.

Society has turned love into a competition of who can care less. 
Who can make the other person jealous, text the slowest, be the busiest.
Who can have the most options, the most numbers, the most quick and shallow connections in a quick and shallow society.
We want all things quick and dirty.
We are quick to judge, quick to anger, quick to care less.

Quick to collect and dispose of each other. 
Yet of all of the things we are quick to do, we are not quick to offer love. 

We consider each other undeserving of love, because the world has told us so many times that we personally are undeserving of love. 

And this is a pattern of thought I hope to change with three simple ideas:

1. Ask yourself “Are my thoughts, words, and actions coming from a place of fear or love?”

The games we play in our relationships are really a way we distract ourselves from the fear, and likely reality, that love will hurt. Vulnerability will hurt. Connection will hurt. But when we do all things out of love for ourselves and love for those we are with, the games end and the fear of pain doesn’t have to control us.

2. When you hurt, love harder.

Don’t take someone’s inability to love you back as a message of your worthiness for love. In reality, it is a reflection of their capacity to love themselves. Show them their worthiness by continuing to love. Continue in quiet love from a distance. This won’t always give you love immediately, but love has an incredible ability to heal. Quiet love for others heals them, even when they do not feel it. It will improve their capacity to love the next person. Pay it forward, and in time love will return to you.

3.  Believe that by becoming love, you will become loved.

Light attracts light. The more you offer love to yourself and to others, the more love you will feel returned to you. Sometimes this will be through other people, sometimes it will be from God or from nature. Love is what you are. It is from where you came, and it is where you are going. The love you have, and give to others, is the greatest treasure you could ever have.

And above all else, choose love over fear.

Love,

Rachel