By Margaret Shrum
My parents were madly in love, so much that my father designed a house and filled it with gorgeous furniture that accommodated my mother’s petite 4’10 stature. He made sure that she could reach every shelf, her feet touched the ground on every chair she sat in and he created a home that was cozy and special for her. At the end of her life, he was with her in her last moments, I’m sure she felt loved even at her last breath, he was there at her side. Being a romantic, I’ve always dreamed of experiencing my own legendary love. I imagined from a young age, that I would conjure romance, a fantasy lover who swept me off my feet and treasured me with constant adoration. And I did!
At 45, I discovered that my legendary lover was ME! Love…It all begins inside of us. I’ve been married and Divorced…twice. I have loved big and been loved back. So over the past year, I decided to research love and what it meant in my life. What I discovered after dating over 72 men in 12 months in 2012, was what I already knew, that this was all an inside job. The men I dated were lovely and loving, but I didn’t need them to validate me, I realized that how I felt about myself was where the true love appeared. We’ve all heard the saying “we need to love ourselves first before we can love anyone else”. Not only true, but we need to love all parts of ourselves- the dark and light sides to our personality. In fact our darkest parts are often what makes us most beautiful, once we accept and celebrate those parts. Sharing those dark and light parts with others, both friends and potential partners, helps us grow and realize that true intimacy and love comes from being vulnerable through acceptance.
A friend sent me this interesting video, taken from the Tom Robbins book “Still Life With a Woodpecker”.
Please take a moment to watch it. The question of “who knows how to make love stay” comes up for a princess throughout out the book. Now that is a great question. “Who knows how to make love stay?” and here is my answer:
The greatest love we can have is the love affair we have with ourselves. Only then can we share our love fully with others. Love not “staying” is an illusion based on fear, love lives inside us all and is boundless. We can choose to love without expectation and free ourselves from disappointment. I believe that if you truly love someone, love never leaves. Even if the person physically moves onto another space, the love is always tucked away inside our souls and our subconscious minds. Love is not just a state of mind, it is life, the force that drives us, it fuels our passion and is behind all that we do. Love can’t be defined by words. We instinctively love our families, friends, lovers, fellow human beings, animals, the earth, beauty, creativity and beyond. That is our sole purpose, to love and be loved in this lifetime and the next…
Who is your Legendary Love? I invite you to explore how you can be your own legendary lover and of course celebrate and appreciate all of the beautiful loves you have had in your lifetime!
