EDITOR'S NOTE: JUNE IN LOVE
photo by Ilham Danial As-Siddiq
Hi friends,
Today I write to you from a coffee shop in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain where I am on a solo trip, currently turning thirty (all day today), and even though I am gearing up to watch a bullfight in the center of Madrid later, I have been thinking non-stop about one thing, LOVE! Dead a*s, too!
What even is love? Why do we need it? Where can we find it? What does it apply to? What are the benefits? Why does it hurt sometimes? Why does everyone define it differently? Is there such a thing as unconditional love? If so, then what is conditional love? Can you love if you haven’t had love? What does ‘self-love’ have to do with all of this?
I recently asked someone here in Madrid what love means to them and he said: “self-love is love because if you don’t love yourself, who is going to love you?”
Love and Parents
Yes, we love our mothers and we love our fathers. And some of us don’t love our mothers and we don’t love our fathers. But then again we love our parents ‘regardless’ but what is ‘regardless’? The reason we love our parents ‘regardless’ is because it is because of them that we have consciousness, good friends, and a job that we love. Not necessarily because they taught us how to attain these things, or because they’ve encouraged us to live a life we deserve (because some parents weren’t around to do so), but simply because they gave us the birth that gave us the ability to become ourselves and have these things. We know what our parents sacrificed for us to be here today and we even actually know exactly how we got here too which is through our mothers (body) with the help of our fathers (sperm).
This kind of love can naturally only come from a parent(s) that is yours.
Love and Self
Essentially, at a very basic level, we all love our parents. This type of basic, no-matter-what kind of love, is the love we are all born with and have access to. This love that is our birth right is right up in us and only grows bigger everyday and stronger every time we make mistakes, get hurt, walk-in shame, or get rejected. Our inner life is supposed to inundate itself with this basic self-love especially when we feel inadequate or when we can’t seem to wrap our heads around our painful past experiences or shake our fears. Self-love is unconditional love.
And guess what? This is the same exact love that allows us to truly love other people.
Love and Romance
Love in romance is simple because true love is recognizable and feels familiar right when you come across it. You’ll be able to pick this one love out of a million easily. That’s first, but secondly, you’ll find that your main interest when you find real, true love is becoming the best version of yourself. True love will make you want to up your kindness toward yourself and others, it will encourage you to enrich our health and wealth, and propel you, so strongly, to work towards your dreams. I really wish there was more to it, but it truly is that simple when it is real.
True love inspires!
Love and Me
My personal definition of love has always been attention. When you place your attention on yourself and how you feel inside of your body, whether that is fatigued or euphoric, that is self- love in action. When you put your attention on your child or on the food you are cooking that is love in action. When we put our attention on our significant other, we get to know them better every day. When we put our attention on our environment and climate, we learn more about how our individual actions impact the planet we live on.
You guessed it. This month on Loyal Nana we are talking about ‘LOVE!’ and rejoicing in it too so stay close, follow us on Instagram, talk to yourselves in the mirror (but only say nice things!), stop doing things you don’t actually want to do, revisit your religion especially if it's getting in the way of your happiness, forgive yourself but adjust your habits, email us sweet love notes, submit ideas, topics and/or questions anonymously, and drink water.
Love and light,
Amanda Saviñón
Founder, Loyal Nana