Loving On Your Own Terms

February is known as the month of love, a time when we celebrate and acknowledge the feeling that makes the world go round. However, love means different things to different people. If you were to ask one hundred people to define love, you would get one hundred different responses.

Everyone has their own unique perspective and interpretation of love. Over the years, my understanding and definition of love have evolved and changed. I have realized that learning to love and accept love on your own terms makes it more powerful and meaningful.

As human beings, our thoughts and feelings about love are shaped by our upbringing. Our first experience of love comes from our parents or guardians who raised us. This experience could have been either positive or negative. If we were raised with a loving and caring approach, this is how we show love to those around us. However, if we were raised in an environment that was unloving and harsh, we may find ourselves exhibiting the same behavior toward others. 

Being unloved or loved improperly can lead us to believe that we do not deserve better or that this is what love is supposed to be. It may have even caused us to accept harmful situations in our lives and made us hesitant to trust others or be vulnerable, leading to bad relationships and unresolved emotional trauma. 

On the other hand, we may have also learned about love in a religious context, where the love of God was emphasized. For some, this was a concept they embraced later in life, after gaining a deeper understanding of who God was and what His love truly entailed. For others, love was discovered later in life through having children or finding a significant other. 

Regardless of how we find it, love is a crucial aspect of how we show up in the world. It is a part of speech that names, shows action, and describes. 

Love is the building block for living life on our own terms. 

We often hear that choosing to love every day is the key to a fulfilled life. However, it is important to note that if we are choosing to love every day but doing it solely on someone else's terms, we may be setting ourselves up for an unfulfilled life. 

Our love journey does not have to be defined by our past experiences. We have the power to decide how we want to love and how we desire to receive it. Our terms are our terms, and we should not copy and paste what our past or society tells us it should be.

You can rewrite your HerStory and choose to love on your own terms.

It starts with my favorite question, "Who Am I?" When you know who you are, you know what you want, and when you know what you want, you do what it takes to create it and make it happen. 

Will everyone jump on board and sign up for your new love terms? No, but the ones that LOVE you will.