When You Realize that Love is the Greatest Gift of All

I was born the oldest of five children to two wonderful people. These people were talented, extremely bright, lovers of music, nature, and kindness to others. These people also grew up in homes that were dysfunctional, and so when they got married, and the rubber hit the road...things weren't so happy. All this means that as parents they didn't have a lot of tools, and their marriage was one of self protection and so their children were in most respects ~empty. I don't want to lump all my siblings into one category or assume to tell their story because my story is only mine. Families all experience the same experiences in totally different ways.  I have realized now that as adults no matter what has happened in the past it is up to us to find our healing and to grow up. Blaming others or remaining in the past hurts us a lot. It stops becoming everyone elses' fault and starts to be ours, cause we are grown ups now. That MIGHT sound like common sense to y'all but not so much to little ol me... I love my parents and am so grateful for all the good they did impart to me, and the wonderful things they taught me, because I now see all the good as clearly as I saw the bad.
I was born in the eighties. My mom often laments that there were so little resources for parents back then. Now there are so many incredible free community supports available to parents who are struggling in their role as a parent. Back then as a parent you were pretty much on your own.
Some of the things I lacked as a child were connection, healthy attachment, and physical touch. When that happens to children parts of them shrivel inside, shut down. Their souls are like gardens and when they are not watered and tended to ~ things that are ugly grow too much and the good things die. I had a lot parts of me that died. I lived in a sort of survival mode. The fight, flight, or freeze, the high cortizol levels, the anxiety, desperation for friends to fill voids, the want, need for connection somewhere, to someone...that was me. However it translated differently in me than in others around me it seemed to me. Instead of craving physical touch and trying to get it I shut that need off. I didn't WANT people to touch me. I felt depressed and tired a lot of the time. I felt distant from myself and from reality. Like my body was always in front of me but I was farther back. I was also very driven. I wanted to be the best I could be so I could have some worth somewhere. So I tried to get the highest grades I could at school. I tried to be the best friend possible. You get the picture.
With all this in my life I gave a lot. I gave out of emptiness because it made me feel like if I gave I would feel worth something. I loved to give and nurture (at least I THOUGHT I did). A massive part of my childhood involved me acting as a parenting figure in my siblings lives and as a sort of helper to my parents. It was an awkward position because I couldn't really be a fun loving care free child. I never felt very free. I remember specific moments in my life where I felt unchained for a moment because I so often felt weighed down with so much responsibility. This started for me when I was three and went on for years until I was in my twenties. I was too serious, too constrained, too proper and a lot of other things. I had secret things I struggled with I told no one about and I just all around felt dark.
I did have self realization and so I knew what my issues were to some degree but I didn't know how to deal with them or what would fill me. I always felt so empty.
I got married when I was twenty one. For a while that helped me feel better because I could find worth in serving my husband and making him happy. I felt like his love was all I needed. I felt brand new ~ for a while.
On our one year anniversary that little bubble of safety disappeared when we had a miscarriage. I think that would have been hard to a degree but not as shattering and totally life changing as what happened with the miscarriage. I was nine weeks along when I miscarried however I had known since the moment I got pregnant that I was pregnant. I just felt so different. I just knew! So it felt like so many days of waiting for a positive test and then I got one and we told everyone and it was so joyful! The miscarriage in itself was tragic for my husband and I but it turned into so much more. I ended up having a molar pregnancy that turned into needing chemotherapy. I'll talk about THAT in another post. It was the miscarriage that lasted for months. As a result of the chemo,  and the loss, everything changed for me. I couldn't be the wife I used to be. I was so sick and needy and my husband did not have the tools to be able to support me the way I needed to be supported. Our marriage started deteriorating from that point for many different reasons.
I had thought his love was healing all my wounds. I had thought he was the ONE that was changing everything for me. Yup, well, he did his best, but once he realized he couldn't when I was so sick, he felt like a failure and everything changed. It wasn't his fault everything fell apart, but for a while I thought that it was.It wasn't his fault he couldn't heal my wounds....because that was impossible. It just was. No one can heal your wounds. Except Jesus. Hands down. My husband's love could help in the healing, soften me and help me be in a place to be healed but he was not the healer. However....
I was empty again. I felt totally betrayed by life! I felt like I had lost even more of myself that I hadn't even had in the first place. My emptiness was massive. My grief immense. I was so lost.
I felt like I didn't have real love from my family or now my husband and I sure didn't love myself. However I kept going.My husband and I stayed together but our innocence and first love changed into self preservation and protection. Some very good things still happened. We adopted our daughter and had our son very shortly after. However as mothering became really intense and I had a newly adopted child and new born...I started realizing more and more clearly that I didn't know how to love. That I didn't feel like I had love in me to freely give. I was trying to give out of emptiness and I resented them for wanting from me. I realized how shut down I was and how distant I was even from myself and from my own body.I didn't know what to do. I felt like love was this illusion of some sort. I felt like I wanted to FEEL love for my children but I didn't understand why they loved me. I felt surprised when they would want to hug me or kiss me or snuggle with me. I realized the depth of my lack. I also remembered how hugging my mom felt because that was how she felt when she hugged me. There was nothing in her to give. Every time I hugged them or picked them up, any physical touch was something I thought about. Most of it was not a natural action for me. It was heartbreaking and scary. It left them just as hungry as I was when I was young. A hug/touch connects your spirit to anothers. It nourishes and feeds the one being hugged on such a deep level. It is a genuine physical, spiritual, emotional NEED! So this issue went on for a long time. I started counseling through a series of events that were nothing short of miraculous in that I didn't even know I was going to get counseling...but I did and it changed so much.  I'll talk about that some other time also. Counseling is wonderful and incredible when you have the right person by the way. However you have to be willing to go there. As in go deep emotionally and work through the shattering pain. You have to try to go back and figure out the why's and grieve the answers.
I titled this post, 'When You Realize that Love is the Greatest Gift of All,' and that is what I want to get to. I sort of decided that I maybe wasn't capable of really feeling love the way other people 'felt' it. I thought maybe that had left me. I dont think it does though. I think I've realized now that love is always there. It can be buried so deeply that you cant feel it at all, but its there. However I think that no one can really get you there to that love. They can show it to you and be unconditional, but YOU still wont feel it if you dont love yourself and you dont re connect with the parts you had to disconnect from, in yourself, for whatever reason at whatever age. I am probably not expressing this clearly or properly but I'm trying.
So I had counseling for years, and I had three children and my husband to love me, and for me to love, but still I struggled so much. I read books about healing and talked to different people, I prayed to God for healing and worked on different aspects of healing on all sorts of levels. I knew though that somewhere deep inside me all that love was still mostly dammed up and I had to start smashing the dam. How?
Slowly but surely, tiny piece by tiny piece, it started. The counseling, decisions and actions I chose to make and take, different books I read, different words of truth from friends, it was slow but it was starting.
The key for me was the deep desire, the relentless pursuit of healing, the desperation. I would NOT give up, I would NOT just settle for how I felt, I wanted so badly to be able to give my children more than what I had been given. I had seen the generational impact that this disconnect did to my parents. I wanted more for the next generation ~ for my children and their children's children. My two oldest children were also damaged from my issues emotionally. I couldn't just keep on the way things were!
When I had my last child something drastic shifted. I think really is what it was was I was finally ready. As a family we had gone through so much through the years. So much. The pregnancy for me was a promise, joy in the midst of a lot of sadness and grief. Something happened though when I physically went into labor and had my baby. I had him at home. I was assisted by two incredible midwives (one of them a treasure for a friend), my husband and my dear friend who photographed it all. Since I was home, I felt safe. The labor was perfect, and although it was labor, I felt so strong the whole way through. My other labors had had challenges and hard ending even though my babies were healthy my body went through trauma. My other babies were under seven pounds. While I labored with my youngest son I was outside a lot of the time, the sun was shining and I felt so present. The midwives massaged my back and feet, and supported me. My husband was selfless in a way that was so sweet, and my friend's presence was so comforting. Things were so peaceful and nurturing for me. I had never remembered feeling so deeply loved. I wish I could express it more eloquently but its like I came back into myself because I finally felt worthy.I had wanted to love myself but there were so many steps of forgiveness and so many levels of pain to heal. On this day I felt like I was powerful and lovely and amazing. I had never felt that to such a degree. My baby was almost nine pounds! That was massive for my body but I was so strong and in such control. I didn't tear horribly and so many things were so perfect. My son had a true knot in his umbilical cord but never went into distress, all the people at my birth had plans for the day, but my labor started at just the perfect time to catch all of them before they left. So many things were miraculous and special and the day felt like a unique gift just to me from God.

My baby is turning a year in a couple days. Through out this year much inside my heart, mind and spirit have shifted. I am thirty three now. It has felt like a long journey that is not close to finished, but my oldest is only ten. I wish I could turn back time and start again as a parent  and a wife so that all the damage that has been done because of my lack wouldn't have to be. The damage is deep. However I feel like it will be okay because its not too late, and really when is it ever too late? My heart is genuine.
I finally realize that love IS the greatest gift of all. Not that I didn't know that in my head but my heart hadn't had a chance to realize it for a really long time. Love gives life, it brings forth preciousness and it brings freedom to be. When you feel totally loved, when you love yourself, when you accept love; it changes everything. It is worth every agonizing battle, it is worth fighting with everything you have for. You are never so lost you cant be found. It's really true! And love really IS the greatest gift of all.