Flow...

We say we love, yet we restrict the flow of love with expectations, doubts and fears dressed up as demands and conditions for the sake of relationship. We toughen up our love, we fight for love and we rage against the dying of love. This can't be love. In love there is no conflict. Love is not tough, love doesn't fight, love doesn't rage. Love loves, it nurtures, it understands, it frees, it shares, it welcomes, it blesses, it celebrates, it dignifies and it encourages. What we fear is that it will not come back to us. Yet by restricting those we love, we stop the flow of love.

The agreements made in love–between friends, lovers and family–are sacred because the partners have bonded in understanding. But there's a difference between the loyalty and respect offered in love and the demand for compliance in the artifice of what love should be. What we commit to in love in any relationship–as friends, parents, lovers, community–is to boundless affection, reverence, fidelity, devotion and an engagement of spirit in which we find comfort, healing, and a shelter for our souls. This is the flow of love.

~As we commemorate International Women's Day, I look at women with love and respect. I also look at men with love and respect for we understand the specialness and the difference of womanhood in relation to men. I think of the women in my family, the women around me and my friends. I am proud of them and happy to be in their lives. I think of the women of the world and know that there's so much to accomplish still. I hope that love prevails so that all women receive respect and are allowed creative, intellectual, political, spiritual, personal and literary freedom, in action and expression. I hope that love prevails so that we can commemorate all people, each day, because we are all respected, honored and loved the same.

Today I love in all the ways I know how to love. Today I let love flow.