Love Is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once or It’s Nothing, Nowhere, Never
Love is.
Love is this: it’s sitting in the sun on an 86°F/ 30°C, extra sunny day. It’s remembering to put on sunscreen before leaving home, not wishing I had when I’m already out in the sun.
It’s the soccer coach setting up before the kids arrive. It’s the little kids kicking with their whole bodies, not just their legs. It’s the sun beating through the trees.
It’s me dancing in my seat to Beyonce. It’s drips and drops of randomness—surely a bird or something peeing on me. It’s being unbothered because the sun is out and so am I!
It’s the iced coffee, well, coffee formerly known as iced, in my in my auntie era tumbler from the little love of my life.
It’s bringing my journals and more books with me than I can read because I ain’t know which one(s) I was gonna favor.
The Clanging Cymbal: A Stream-of-Consciousness on Love and Loss
It’s the beat. It’s the breeze.
Love is everything everywhere all at once.
Or it’s nothing nothing never.
It’s not only the “good”. Love is also the “bad”. The “negative”.
It’s the memorial park bench. A reminder that someone’s someone died. Their son, I think.
It’s a reminder of what was. And what we thought was gonna be.
We don’t get to dictate love. This isn’t a movie we direct. A chorus we write. A symphony we compose.
No. NO. NOOOO!
Love is the clanging of cymbals when there is none. It’s loud in its absence and full in its presence.
Love is loving someone so fucking much you don’t want them to suffer in the physical but you don’t want them to leave the physical, either.
It’s the sisterfriend knowing you’re gonna call again because she didn’t answer your first 3 calls and you needed to hear her voice. Is she okay?! She misses her grandmother like I missed mine.
But I had more warning.
Alzheimer’s took mine long before her physical death did.
Love is saying goodbye when they haven’t yet gone, not wanting them to feel awkward and unknown to their own selves when they no longer know you.
I wish I could say fuck Alzheimer’s. Can’t I?! Why TF can’t I?!
FUCK YOU, ALZHEIMER’S.
(Somehow, today, that feels like I’m also saying fuck God, and that ain’t it!)
Love Is the Liminal
Love is wearing a lil yellow bralette situation out in public even with my weight gain—unsure if we can call it “unexplained” or not.
It’s the soccer coach yelling at kids to hurry back from water break. It’s allergies scratching hard at my eyeballs.
It’s everything:
It’s the dirt under my feet and the pollen in the air.
It’s the history of this town. The enslaved Blacks that inevitably helped build it. The unnamed ones. The heroic ones. The depressed ones. The sad ones. The ones who wanted to die rather than work under the thumb and abusive hand of the enslaver. It’s the ones who took their lives.
It’s the single but married mothers loving their kids.
It’s the women who want kids but haven’t found a safe, romantic, erotic love.
It’s the yearning.
It’s the everything.
How many ways can I say everything?!
It’s the incest survivors who teach others to thrive.
It’s the overeaters who surrender and learn to regain control.
It’s the love of learning.
The love of the sun.
Of music.
Of art.
Of creating.
Of energy.
Love is everything, everywhere, all at once and its’ nothing at all.
It’s the kids on the field who will be a statistic because everyone is.
It’s the zeros. The ones. And the decimals.
Love is returning to the page because even if I don’t get paid, I still get to do it.
Love is fingers clacking on keyboards. It’s the thoughts of my nephew.
It’s the American breeze blowing on my skin when I wish it were Vietnamese. But breeze is breeze. And everything is connected. So who’s to say which breeze this is?
A Prayer to Be Molded, Held, and Directed by Love
Thank you love for the fullness, the emptiness, and the yearning.
For the presence. For the absence.
For the known and unknown.
For the named and unnamed.
For the void. The emptiness. The vastness.
Thank you love for everything we can see. And everything we can’t.
Ancestors, angels, and spirit guides: Guide us. Hold us. Mold us! Be where you want us. Place us where you need us. Direct our steps, open our hearts, and do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.
And so it was. And so it is. And so it will be. Today. Forever, and always. Ase. Ameen. Amen.
Small Steps: Embrace Who You Are Divinely Becoming
Right now, in this very moment, you are worthy of every good, beautiful, noble, and sacred thing in the world — the fullness and the void, the presence and the absence. Not 20 or 80 pounds from now or when your finances are in order or when you have your dream job or when everything is “perfect”. You are worthy now. And if you need support holding it all? That’s what coaching is for.
Ready for more?
- Work With Me: Explore how we can partner in your transformation
- Follow me on TikTok for daily reflections, coaching insights, and love letters to your becoming.
