Love Language

Dear Gentle reader…

Kidding… I wanted to give a little Bridgeton vibe, but you know what? My season has been nothing but gentle. lol.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how love has a language. Some people can speak it fluently and others maybe not so much. Maybe some struggle to express love in a way that others understand. Maybe some are better at giving love than they are receiving.

As time passes, I feel as though I’m finally finding the language to express my love in grief. Because if I’m honest, I’ve struggled internally how to express it and I’m realising now it’s because I could never find the words to describe the deep ache I feel. Now nearing the 3rd year Anniversary of James passing I feel as though I am finally finding my feet in confidence to openly speak the language.

The cloud hasn’t moved above me, but it has definitely changed shape. The burden isn’t as heavy because I have learned over time how to manage it or better yet keep it at bay. And no, it doesn’t get easier as the years pass. You just learn different ways to cope, how to wear your grief and to carry it around with you like a best friend. It never disappears; it just becomes a part of who you are. Even though he’s not here I carry him in the way that I mother.

I get the being crazy in love part but damn, Love does have a price. There is a price you pay for being strong too or at least “appearing” strong to others. I quietly giggle when people often compliment me on being strong because to me it looks like hair loss, no appetite, constant crying in isolation, waking up to hives driven by emotional distress, long solo drives and regulating my children’s emotions in their grief. There is a cost. You don’t just arrive at being strong, it’s more a process of becoming. In reality it’s the process that is often unseen, the grief behind closed doors that allows us to then show up daily in public.

I wish people knew that love is not all highs, it is also the depth of how low you can fall beyond your capacity, and I mean scraping the bottom of the barrel type of love. When there is nothing left in the tank. When there has been infidelity, child loss, infertility, any loss for that matter, sickness and all the things. It’s so rare to see marriages and relationships just fight for their love. Where is the grit to walk through the valleys together? When I look around, I grieve the passion and depth relationships have today. Maybe it’s my lens, maybe it’s because I’ve seen the end, I’ve watched my husband die, I’ve witnessed life leave his body.

There is this hope you carry when you’ve spent hours in hospital with your love. It’s not fickle, it’s quiet. It’s the kind that believes marriages can be restored, that they’re worth saving. No matter what trenches it takes you through. Marriage is hard work; it is not just wedding bells down the aisle.

It’s a reminder that when you choose your person to marry, it’s the one you would bear the weight of the world with when life crumbles and it will. That’s where the work is, where the cost of love is. But isn’t it all worth it?

I have loved and I have lost and I have zero regrets for the cost it has left me to bear. I would choose it over and over again. To love knowing it will break my heart again. It has left me raising two grieving children.

You become undone by it; you lose yourself in it so much because of the overwhelming weight it carries. But it’s the rebuild, it’s the process of coming back to yourself, rediscovering you and rediscovering your love for one another.

When I lost James, I never realised how much he regulated my nervous system. He was my safety, anything could have gone wrong in my life, but I would still feel safe and protected because he was covering me. Even when he was so sick I still felt protected.

So, when he left, it was as though that covering was stripped. My soul was so bare and naked to the world that anything would just crush me and I’d fall to it. In the last year I never had the language to describe this to anyone because I didn’t know whether anyone could relate to this feeling. The feeling of not being safe. The feeling of being surrounded even by your nearest and dearest and still feeling like you don’t belong, like you’re not at home. This is where I’ve had to intentionally work on myself to figure out how to almost reboot and learn how to regulate my own nervous system without relying on anyone to be my safe place. Let me tell you, it has been the hardest internal work I’ve ever had to do. Like I know God has me but that does not disregard the work we truly have to do internally to heal.

I don’t know who this piece may resonate with. But I truly believe in restoration and how God can restore any relationship and any individual. But there has to be willingness to want to do the work, to want to restore, to want to forgive and to want to learn to speak love in the language your relationships respond to. I hope this gives you the quiet hope of knowing just how much love can heal your relationships when you open your heart up again to speak your love language. Maybe your relationships are already flourishing so let this be a reminder that dry seasons will come and when they do, be ready to speak love again. Or maybe you’re in the rebuilding stages of restoring your relationship, please know I am rooting for you too. No matter what the world says it’s always you two & God that has the last say.

With Love Lata x