What Is Love, Really?

For most of my life, I didn’t just not love myself—I secretly hated myself.

And yet, if you’d asked anyone around me, they might have said I was one of the most loving people they knew. I showed up. I gave. I cared deeply. I nurtured, held space, gave advice, supported people through grief and heartbreak. I loved—or at least, I thought I did.

But now, sitting in the stillness of a different season of life, I find myself asking:

Was it genuine love? Or was it care and kindness given to validate a deep wound in me—a belief that I was unworthy unless I was needed?

It’s a confronting question.

And I know I’m not the only one who’s ever asked it.

“You can’t love others until you love yourself.”

That’s what they say.

It sounds wise, but it also sounds… off.

Because I did love others. Fiercely.

Even when I felt hollow inside.

Even when I couldn’t look in the mirror without hearing that cruel, inner voice.

So does that mean it wasn’t real?

No. It was real. But it was incomplete.

Looking back, I see that much of what I thought was love was often layered with something else—a longing to be chosen, seen, or safe.

It wasn’t bad or fake. It was just shaped by the survival strategies I had at the time.

And now, as I find myself unraveling those strategies, I’m asking the question all over again:

What is love, really?

Not romantic love.

Not the kind taught in fairy tales or sung about in ballads.

Not love as obedience or martyrdom or codependence.

I want to know what love is at its essence.

If the universe is a singular, living consciousness—what is love then?

Love Isn’t a Feeling

This is what I’ve come to understand:

Love is not a feeling. Love is not kindness. Love is not something you give or get.

Genuine love—if we’re really talking about the deepest truth—is not transactional, not emotional, and not even relational in the way we’re taught.

Love is the Self recognizing the Self.

It is the universal consciousness, folded into form, suddenly remembering itself in another face, another tree, another child, another silence.

That’s why sometimes love hits you in the strangest places—a sunrise, a poem, the way a stranger laughs. Because in that moment, there’s no you and it. There’s just this—one being remembering its own reflection.

Love isn’t something we do.

Love is what we are, when we’re not pretending to be separate.

What Love Felt Like When I Didn’t Love Myself

When I didn’t love myself, love felt like proving.

Like hustling for worth.

Like needing someone to need me so I wouldn’t feel disposable.

It felt like pouring out more than I had, afraid that if I stopped, I’d disappear.

It felt like being good, kind, useful, helpful—because deep down, I didn’t believe I was enough just being.

It wasn’t fake. But it wasn’t free.

There were strings I didn’t even know I was pulling on.

Now that I’ve begun to see through those old patterns, love feels different.

It’s quieter.

It doesn’t beg or prove.

It’s not afraid of being unseen.

Sometimes it just is—like breath, like gravity.

So Then, What Is Genuine Love?

If the universe is One, if there is no true separation between you and me, then genuine love is:

• The movement of wholeness recognizing itself in fragmentation.

• The return to coherence when distortion falls away.

• The natural state of being when we stop resisting what is.

This is not a concept. It’s not esoteric, even if it sounds that way.

You’ve felt this before.

In those moments when the mind goes quiet, and your whole being softens in the presence of something true.

In the way you instinctively comfort a crying child.

In the awe you feel watching the ocean inhale.

You’ve been that ocean.

You’ve been the child.

You’ve been the one holding, the one weeping, the one remembering.

Love is not what you do for someone.

Love is what becomes possible when there is no “someone” at all—just being. Just recognition. Just presence.

The Implications

This changes everything.

If love is the gravitational pull of the universe toward unity, then healing is love.

Justice is love.

Boundaries can be love.

Silence can be love.

Love isn’t always sweet. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it disrupts.

But if it leads toward integration—toward remembering our shared essence—it’s love.

It’s not about liking everyone.

It’s about not being at war with what is.

It’s about living from a place where nothing is outside the circle of belonging—not even the parts of yourself you once hated.

Love Isn’t the Goal. It’s the Ground.

I used to chase love.

Now, I try to remember that love is the default state when separation dissolves.

It’s not out there. It’s the field we’re always in—we just forget.

I forget all the time.

But when I remember—even for a breath—I find myself back in something bigger than me.

Not floating away, but grounded. Rooted. Here.

And that, to me, is what real love feels like:

Nothing missing. Nothing separate. Just this. Just All.