All My Love

In January of 2020, as my sister’s battle with cancer was near the end, love was the family theme. We showed love, we spoke love, we shared love.  When life is coming to an end, love is all you need. We used a closing from a letter written by Amy as the tag on the bags of kisses at her celebration of life: “With all my love, Aims”. My niece also had a necklace made for me out of my sister’s handwriting that says All My Love. Amy left us with love, and now, we still have love for her, and nowhere to go with it. 

In August, my husband and I took our daughter back to South Carolina for her second year of college. Since we were going to have to quarantine upon return, we figured we’d stay a couple of extra days and went to Myrtle Beach to visit friends from high school. While I was there, I realized how much I miss that feeling of someone really just caring about me, for me. I had several families that provided a lot of care for me at a time when my parents weren’t physically around. Since I’m now a mom, my perspective has changed, and going back to places of comfort from when I was a teenager gives me an even greater appreciation for the people who have given me unconditional love over the years. People who didn’t have to, but still did.

In September, I was sitting outside, and I looked over to my left. And there was a perfectly little shaped heart leaf, on a plant in a basket that I have. It dawned on me that all of us want to give and receive all of our love. Not just love of one part of our life, but the love from our physical life, the love from our emotional being, the love from our spiritual being, and from our own mental health. We can’t pick and choose which part of love to share. We need to share and receive all our love.

With the loss of my sister, and since my parents have already passed, it made me realize that I’m the keeper of my love. I have a lot of love to give. I realized that there are holes in the ways that I used to receive love. Holes from persons who gave me love that are no longer here. Holes that I’ll have to allow to be open to receiving from other areas of love. If I allow those areas to stay open but unfilled, it will affect my ability to be able to receive love from others. To be able to feel to be able to feel fulfilled, accepted, heard and seen. 

Let’s work together to figure out how we can give “all my love” because I believe when you open yourself up to giving all your love, you’ll receive more love as well.