Lovin' it.

Love. (…yuck haha) Sometimes that word still makes me cringe, but I’m learning to appreciate it, so here goes.

I’ve always perceived love as a notion of weakness, protective of the vulnerability that is associated with it, that it shouldn’t be shared with just anybody, with the idea that just because one has the ability to open the doors to our heart, they have complete hold over our mind and emotion and the ability to take it away.

I thought being stoic towards whom we encounter would shield me from people being able to touch our heart with deception and the reality of life whether it may be romantically, through blood, or socially. It goes down to the point where we almost never want to feel the absence of love again and keeping the bit that we hold familiar to. When we don’t welcome love back into our surroundings its as if it can never be taken away if we don’t keep hold of it…so we choose to remain cold.

We can protect our heart all we want, but the only way to experience warmth is to openly receive it, share it with others, our life, and most importantly to ourselves, we all are meant to experience the good and bad of it all. Love doesn’t necessarily mean comfort, but reveals the truth and respect we have within our heart.

What I’ve found is that it takes a strong person to share love at all times. To those who show us love back, to the ones who hurt us, and to the ones who are no longer physically present before us.

Those who show love in silence quakes the strongest.

Some of the strongest people are remembered for sharing love and compassion from saints like Mother Theresa to activists like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, just to name a few. They are remembered for standing up with compassion and giving the opportunity for those around them to experience love back. They loved hard, fought with love and became great teachers of it in history.

Its easy to be cold and shield ourselves from the emotions and lessons its brings but it takes strong will power to take a chance to love with all you’ve got, face the chance of heartache, recover from it, and grow anew with a new perspective and sense of self.

Love, it starts with you. Learn to love yourself with all you’ve got for when you share it and someone takes a piece of it, you’ll know how to mend it and give it back to yourself. When we love who we are we learn to share it, becoming an example of it to those around us.

Love. Embrace it. Share it. We all are capable of it, so lets teach how we love.

With love, Justine.

DETAILS

Photography: Nadia Kristine (Olive you!)

Ruched Top: Nordstrom Rack

Slacks: Uniqlo

Belt: Longhamp

Shoes: Botkier