You came into my world. You came into my soul.

It seemed like forever that I had been waiting for unconditional love.

And there you were offering it to me—freely.

I took it for a moment and held you and your love in my arms. It felt incredible.

But there was a little girl inside of me afraid of love. Convinced that attention was attached to punishment and trying to save herself from pain, she was afraid of the wholehearted presence of another being.

She was convinced that love hurts and wasn’t ready to let you in.

You felt like an intruder to her, a threat to her safety.

So she pushed you away.

I heard her words come out of my mouth. My body spoke the language of her fears.

Every time she pushed you away, you stood in the doorway to my heart patiently waiting until I was ready to let you in again.

But this little girl was stubborn. She controlled my mind and created judgmental thoughts. She made me think you had poor boundaries and did not respect yourself enough, when all you ever wanted was to fully love me with all of my unhealed, inner-childness, all of my open wounds, all of my imperfections.

“That’s not possible,” I heard her say, mistaking her voice of fear with the voice of my intuition. I pushed you away one last time. I slammed the door to my heart in front of your face to make sure you will never return and threaten me with the purity of your love.

Because in the presence of your utter affection, the painful memories would return. Memories of countless past moments of emptiness. Moments of absence of love.

The little girl inside of me was not ready to go there again. She was not ready because she did not know that the world had moved forward, and she was actually living in an adult body. in a different time and space.

After years of letting her push everybody away who came to close, I finally understood that all this little girl needed was for me to connect to her again. She needed to express her fears, scream, and cry the tears of loneliness. She needed to see that feeling cared for was not painful or dangerous, and join me in the safety and softness of the present moment.

I showered her in absolute presence until she was able to open herself, her spirit and mind, to the possibilities of pure attention and sheer warmth again.

And when I took this wounded inner child back into my being, I thought of you.

For the first time in my life I understood the intensity and beauty of your never-ending kindness.

For the first time in my life I saw that unconditional love had presented itself to me in the form of your face, your smell, your touch. Instead of welcoming it, I had pushed it far away.

I can finally feel the pain that my actions have caused you. I can see how your soul split into a thousand pieces when I closed the door to my heart forever.

Today, I go back into this moment and turn the knob to a door that seemed to be closed forever into an open house of eternal acceptance.

I go back in time and breathe in all the kindness you offered me in the past.

And I invite you back into a universal space of pure tenderness, so that you can continue to give the world what you so freely gave to me: the gift of unconditional love.
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Author: Alice Dea
Image: Myri Pa. Used with permission.
Editor: Travis May
Copy Editor: Callie Rushton
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