I am Love.

DEAR ANDY,

We’re coming upon your 4th birthday. I can’t believe you’re going to be four! Where does the time go? I realize it’s a cliché, but I honestly don’t know how we got so far so fast! It feels like we’ve been on a roller coaster ride and every year on your birthday I get time to reflect, pause, and celebrate us. You, me, and your amazing father. And here’s what I want you to know:

In your life, the most valuable relationships you will have will teach you that you are worthy of love. Remember that. Anyone or anything who doesn’t reflect that message back to you is probably not a good long-term fit. It takes years to understand that we are worthy of love as flawed human beings.

We spend our time sabotaging relationships, jobs, and opportunities because we look for proof that we aren’t worthy, and it isn’t until we are ready to be entirely vulnerable that we allow ourselves to be fully loved. But worthiness isn’t something we earn, it is something we are. At all times, from birth, we are worthy of love. And as I said, the best relationships of your life (including the one you have with yourself) should reiterate and emphasize in action and in words how worthy of love you are.

The one exception I’ll make to this rule is the relationship of parenting. Hopefully, as you enter into parenthood, you have some notion that you’re worthy of love because you won’t learn that from becoming a parent. Parenthood teaches you that you are Love. When you become a parent, you understand and fully embody the meaning, feeling, and resonant “all” that is Love, and that can be challenging. Because being Love ain’t easy. It’s not for the weak and it’s certainly challenging for those who doubt their own worthiness.

Becoming your mother was one of the hardest transitions in life I’ve ever had. And I won’t get into it again, but there was a lot of trauma and mental illness in the first few months of your life. It took me months to come out of it, but even in the moments when I could not feel joy, I felt great love for you. Becoming Love is what enabled me to get up with you every night even as I cried, and trembled, and had no idea what I was doing.

What we learn from becoming parents is that love is a selfless, giving act that is never finished. There is never a shortage of love when we allow ourselves to give it. It is exhausting and complete and overtakes our entire being. When we are given permission (or responsibility, in the instance of parenting), loving becomes the most powerful thing we can do.

Now, this might sound very sweet and lovely. And at times, from the receiving end, it certainly is. But being Love is actually awful. It’s late nights with no sleep and vomit-covered sheets. It’s the torture of listening to a baby cry and not knowing how to help, or seeing your child in pain and not having the power to stop it.

Being Love is practicing conscious kindness and patience to help your child have some semblance of mental health and a sense of security as a grownup. Being Love is crying in the shower when you don’t want your child to see you upset and guaranteeing them that you have the money to send them to the college of their dreams when you can’t even afford shampoo. Being Love is painful and relentless and what you are left with at the end of the day, instead of resentment, is a warm, swelling heart, that glows when met with a child’s smile and sings with the sound of that same child’s laughter.

To be Love is to be in a constant state of mourning, as you are fully conscious, for the first time in your life, of how quickly time moves. And at every moment you are watching it dance across the face of your perfect child, as the soft cheeks and squishy fingers become the wily smile of a person with a destiny and a purpose. Every moment of being Love is as painful as it is joyous, and that is how we know we are truly in the essence and embodiment of that which is Infinite.

I believe that in the end, Love is all that exists. Some call it God, or nature, or prana, or the Force. I call it Love. And I believe it exists in all things, from creation to destruction. I felt myself become one with this Love when you were born. When I surrendered my ego, exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, and they asked me while I lay blurry-headed on the hospital bed if I wanted to cut you out to make sure you were ok, I said yes. Resolutely. Anything to protect and save my baby. That was Love.

I am Love in the night like the shining of the stars, when you reach for my light. I appear and shine above you to remind you of all the company you possess. I am Love when like a thunderclap, my voice rings out to scold you, protecting you from damaging yourself or going down the wrong path. I am Love in my moments of sunshine, when the smile I bestow beams with radiant pride I have for you, my creation. I am Love with my downpour and my floods. I am Love with my breeziness and whispers. I am Love with each base, primitive, natural, intuitive thought I possess. To protect, to guide, to shield, to nurture, to sit with, to grow, to observe, and to let go are my jobs. Each one of them demanding more each day, allowing me to fulfill the destiny I was born for, to become your mother and to become Love.

I should clarify that I don’t think you have to become a parent to become Love. I’ve had friends who lost parents at an early age, who cared for them as they slowly ebbed from existence in the most painful of ways. Their young hearts became Love. I think you can become Love because of a pet, or an elderly loved one, or for communities of people whose lives mean everything to you. Becoming Love isn’t just for those of us who choose to be parents. It’s for anyone who is overtaken by the purity of what seems like a sacrifice but is, in fact, the well that never dries.

My wish for you on each of your birthdays is that you feel worthy of love and that you have the fortune to be surrounded by those who have been given the gift of becoming Love because you gave it. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for what I have become. It is because of you that I know who and what I truly am, and it is because of you that I will never be content with feeling anything less than all of my Love.

Love always,

Mom