Learning How to Love Unconditionally

Learning How to Love Unconditionally 

A few weeks ago I attended an event with one of my favorites, Sunny Dawn Johnston. The day was focused on healing and using the different modalities available to us, specific to the arch angels. But like most self-help, healing events such as these, there is always something more that comes to light. For me, it was the realization that I don’t know how to love unconditionally. Ouch.

For the past few weeks, I have sat with this new awareness in the pit of my stomach. I have experienced an array of emotions from a deep sadness to a seething anger at the one person I hold the most responsible for this missing skill in my life: my mother. A flash of past relationships, or shall I say, failed relationships fill my thoughts and further my emotions spiral. I can’t help but wonder if this condition contributed to the lack of love in my life. I am forced to take responsibility. And now, the next question...how do I learn to love unconditionally?

Growing up my mother’s daughter came with its own set of unique conditions. I learned at a very young age not to rock the boat; being good meant survival. Being perfect though, meant I might earn the affection and love I was so desperate to receive from my mother. The last time I saw her, she stood in my kitchen, looked me up and down and said to me “Well you aren’t too overweight that you couldn’t stand to lose another five or so pounds.” I was 109 pounds and in the best physical shape of my adult life. I had finally gotten to her perfect weight on the scale and it still wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough.

Today, I am left with the harsh reality that I am perfectionist in almost everything I do and living with my self is a real bitch somedays. Living up to my own ridiculous standards is nearly impossible for me, how do I expect another human being to do it?

I have spent hours rolling this around in my head…and now putting it into words helps me gain some much needed clarity. I like to fancy myself a bit of a hippie with the notion that the world should be full of love and everyone wearing flowers in their hair. To realize that I don’t really know how to love unconditionally is big blow to my ego.

I have thought about all the areas of my life that this impacts, and not in a positive way…like how I love myself, my body, my thoughts…if I am being honest, it is a big judgement-fest going on in my head, and all because of this deeply rooted need to be perfect…in the quest for the one thing I long for the most: unconditional love. Oh the irony…

In the dictionary the word “unconditional” means without condition; absolute. My curiosity wonders what the word absolute means: free from imperfections; complete. Perfect; free from restrictions or limitations. There is the answer I am looking for, and perhaps a better way to define what it means to love…without restrictions or limitations.

I know I am not the only one who feels the same way and I certainly know I am not the only one with a parent who rationed out the affection. We grow up in a world that places conditions and restrictions on nearly everything we do, feel, or imagine from our first breath to our last. We are taught to judge at a very early age… what is good or bad, pretty or ugly, too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny…we are taught to judge before we are taught how to love. And when we place judgement or restriction, we can’t help but stop the flow of love. To judge is a contradiction to the very essence of love.

I have two beautiful little dogs and when I think about them, it is pure joy. I miss them when they are not with me and I can’t stay mad at them for more than a few minutes, because as soon as I look at their sweet faces, my heart melts. The joy that they bring me is unconditional. They do not care if I am having a good day or a bad day…what I am wearing, how much I weigh, or how much money is my bank account. They are the very definition of absolute love. Perhaps I do know how to love unconditionally…just not another human being. But I am a work in progress.

While I am still learning how to apply my unconditional adoration of my sweet pups to another human, I have come to understand that love is a choice. And I am capable of making that choice. I am an adult and I get to choose what I define as beautiful, what is good or bad. I get to control the flow of love in my life.

I am tired of not receiving the unconditional love that surrounds me in all forms, because I am too obsessed with being perfect. I am tired of limiting the love I give because it doesn’t met a condition that was created by someone else. I am far from perfect and will likely never attain perfection in this human life. So why not just be? Be perfectly imperfect and in-love with life. Love is a choice. It’s the only choice.

Sending you much love,

Sarah Michelle

Author . Coach . Trainer . Speaker

Author of Tales of Fried Bologna: A Journey to Forgiveness