First of all I‘d like to get technical for a moment… bare with me. It‘ll all make sense and I promise it won‘t be the length of an architectural law lecture!

By definition Dictionary of the English language by Samuel Johnson (1768, 3rd edition)
To Love :

1,To regard with passionate affection. 2, to regard with affection of a friend. 3, to regard with parental tenderness. 4, to be pleased with. 5, to regard with a reverent unwillingness to offend.

Love:
1, The passion between the sexes. 2, Kindness; goodwill; friendship 3, Courtship. 4, Tenderness; parental care. 5, liking; inclination to. 6, Object beloved. 7, Lewdness. 8, Unreasonable liking. 9, Fondness; concord. 10, Principle of union. 11, Picturesque representation of love. 12, A word of endearment. 13 Due reference to God.

Old English lufu, of Germanic origin; from an Indo–European root shared by Sanskrit lubhyati ‘desires’, Latin libet ‘it is pleasing’, libido ‘desire’

Now here‘s where it gets a little more interesting…. When you think of the word “love” does it bring up the meanings above or something quite different??? Thanks to a quick Google search here‘s what it says…actually I won‘t bore you with reading all of that!

What I would like you to notice are the antonyms of ‘Love’…
Hatred, hate, loathe, detest

For the longest time the word “love” has held an intense and very dense hard and horrible twist to it (refer to the antonyms)… From the moment I was conceived I was not unloved but I sure as anything wasn‘t exactly celebrated either… My father had a blossoming career in the Navy and my mother was near the end of her first year at university to become the English teacher she dreamed of becoming… Well I guess I had other plans for them! Whoops sorry Mum and Dad! So they chose and changed direction… and we became a family.

Many things shifted and changed in my world and a part of that was being in 4 different primary schools by the time I was 7 years old. My parents had split at this time and my life had been flipped upside down. I wasn‘t upset so much by that though as I was getting away from the girls who hated my hair cut and the teacher that broke my ruler and got me in trouble with my Dad for talking in class… The funny things that matter to a 6.5 year old! 😉

So we had moved to a small village to be near my Grandparents. It was a rural community and everyone knew everyone. My best friends became the kids up the street that had no street signs but we all knew what the names were (mostly!) and our days were spent in school or at the river or playing down at the domain and later on horse riding. It was probably the most happy times of my life… however what others didn‘t know was very subtly very quietly something was developing in my world…

 

This event was the beginnings of me doubting what love could or would mean for me. Over a 2 year span until I was 9 years old I was very gently, very carefully, “groomed” and “primed” for adulthood. Without going into too many details, the man involved who I loved dearly, ended up being sentenced to jail for 2 years for sexual molestation. My Mum was the one I turned to when I became aware something was wrong with the relationship and I am so grateful to her for believing in me when many wouldn‘t have. She prevented something much more invasive happening and for that I am truly grateful.

 

Fast forward to 6 years later… I‘m 15 years old and have become friends with a group of kids a year or so older than me. I was happy, the kids my age annoyed me. And off I went to a party… I met a guy… he was kind and funny and really seemed to like me… he didn‘t treat me like some silly kid tagging along… and so we began our relationship.

 

Now when my Mum found out that he was 21, well you can imagine how that went down!!! I can only guess how she was feeling at that time… the fear that her daughter, with so much potential and intelligence, would end up pregnant and never get to live the life she dreamed that daughter could have… and so the freak out began. During this time the guy and I would hang out… we would hold hands, chat, watch TV, sometimes kiss, snuggle his baby pet possum, and laugh at the cute way his grandparents would kiss each other. He made it very clear that he would not have sex with me until I was of legal age, which for us was 16, and I was fine with that. He never went under my clothes and I was grateful for the escape from home life and to have some kindness, caring, love and nurturing… something that had been missing from my life for a long time… that relationship only lasted 3 months due to my Mum making it very clear that my choice was not acceptable in her home… it just long enough to begin to cement further that to love someone was only going to lead to hurt.

 

Jump forward to the end of my second year away from home. I am studying architectural drafting and I have fallen in love with a lovely guy who was studying environmental sciences. It was an incredible summer, and one that I will always hold dear in my heart. However, he ended that via a letter as he didn‘t wish to have a long distance relationship and I still had 6 months to go before I was finished. Yup you guessed it. Another twist in the definition and strings of Love for me… and in plops the Point Of View that I don‘t deserve a guy who will love, care, nurture, be fun, and create with… they will either leave or I would have to push away…

 

And so up comes my first marriage… ooooh boy! Now that was a real flip… at 21 years old I had gone from choosing guys who were kind and caring to someone who was a narcissistic arse! On the very first time I met him I thought, ‘Far out what a self centered wanker!’

 

Truly it‘s times like that I wish I had had known about the tools of Access Consciousness®! The recovery times would have been so much quicker! Haha

 

By the end of that year I had bounced into another relationship… this time it was with someone I could care about, but love… well no… loving myself was a work in progress and loving someone else was neigh on impossible… so I chose someone who I didn‘t have to love… and by the time I realized what I had done it was a year down the track and I had finally begun to wake up and get honest with myself… and while it was not an easy choice to make I chose once again to leave… I couldn‘t honour him. I couldn‘t have allowance for him and his choices… and my gratitude for him was slipping fast… and that wasn‘t ok in my books… So I did the kindest thing I could. And broke it off…

 

So you may be wondering where am I at now??? You can see how all the twists happened (and those were just the major ones, there was an almost rape in there and also a few interesting relationships with girls thrown in for good measure!)… now it may make sense as to why I said to pay attention to those antonyms… clever hey! 😉

 

So now I am choosing to receive… in remembering how to receive from others, I have remembered how to receive from me…

 

I began to receive adoring from new playmates, and also my business began to grow some more… I had new clients and a class to facilitate… I had someone special in my world who was gently showing me the kindness and caring that I truly be… and I began to look at why I wasn‘t willing to have another live in relationship… which uncovered all the energy and twistedness attached to the situations mentioned above…

 

I perceive a joyousness around and through me that I actually can‘t recall ever having felt this lifetime on this scale… It‘s quite fascinating to me… And I am completely enraptured by it… It‘s truly like I can breathe for the first time!

 

And now I can actually look at those definitions at the beginning of this blog and smile… and for the first time this lifetime actually know what it means to love, to be nurturing, to care and to receive all of that from other‘s as well…I now get it that in all my time of struggling to push that away from me, it resided within me all along and now that I am being vulnerable with those I care about that they now have the freedom to be that with me too… and for me, that is a huge gift!

 

An invitation for more happiness and joy on the planet and in my life… that my friends is what I really desire… and if it has to start with me then so be it! I‘m stepping up! And being that loving, caring, sweet, funny, nurturing, strong, tenacious, determined, completely aware, delicious, orgasmic, sexy, beautiful, amazing and inspirational being that I truly be…

Big Hugs to you all!
Arohanui