Losing a Lover is losing Love.
Losing a lover is losing love.
Today is Valentines Day and love is heavily on my heart.
A few months ago my lover and I parted ways.
This process has been a re-initiation in the oceans of grief for me, my experience perhaps most poignant painted in the piece I wrote:
"Navigating the grief of an ended lovership is the hardest thing I have had to navigate in a very long time
It is an endless non-linear spiral that is tearing me apart and cracking me wide open
I feel weak and lost and afraid
And feel trust and self-compassion and love
I want it to be over and I trust the process
I want to be held and I want to be alone
It feels impossible to be holding space for others and it feels like the most sacred time to be of service
Grief, you are the black night of love. I fear you and yet I am honoured to know you.
For your presence is evidence that I have deeply loved."
Though I have been comforted and loved by many in this time, it has been interesting to receive the question: “But you weren’t going out were you?” On more than one occasion.
This question, though not intentionally malice, spoke to a larger cultural assumption:
That a lovership is lesser than a relationship.
No, my lover and I never entered the realm of labelling our love.
But it was love nonetheless.
We created routines together, communicating every day
We travelled together
Dreamed together
Dined together
Cried together
Laughed together
Visioned together
Opened our minds to each other
Opened our bodies to each other
Opened our hearts to each other.
We were tethered, energetically bonded.
And that bond has slowly been severed.
The hooks, one by one, are being removed.
The threads of connection, bit by bit dissolving.
When the question is asked, but was it a relationship? I feel my capacity for love is being questioned.
Why should our lovers be less essential to our lives and our developments than any other kind of partnership?
Why should a one night stand, who splits us open and touches the tip of our exquisitely sensitive cervix not be worth grieving when they are gone?
Our bodies, hearts and genitals do not care about labels.
They care about how they feel.
They are valid and worthy of their grief, their joy, their ecstasy, their desires - whatever they may be.
As illogical, unadulterated, inexplicable or unusual as they may be.
I know my heart.
I can hear thudding with pain as I type out these truths.
I can feel its resistance in the dates I have been asked on these past months.
I can feel the moments when it peaks open with the possibilities beyond this grief.
I will never question anyone's grief, and I invite you to leave your questions that imply judgement, behind.
And instead ask, how are you? What can I do for you?
Or simply state, I see you.
Today is Valentine's day, and for many around the world this is a day that marks what we do not have, which we so crave.
So be tender to your single friends.
Be kind to them.
Be loving to them.
Be romantic to them.
Love is not a commodity for the worthy and partnered.
Love is for all.