Only Ever Met By Love 03/31/26

There’s a phrase that’s been sitting with me lately, and I just keep turning it over from different angles because it feels simple on the surface, but it’s actually pointing to something much deeper. The phrase is: there are only acts of love and cries for love, and both are only ever met by love. The more I sit with that, the more I notice how it shows up everywhere, not just in my work, but in the way people move through the world, the way we meet each other, and the way we meet ourselves. Because when I really look at what we tend to call reactivity, or conflict, or even just “this person is difficult,” it almost always feels like something vulnerable underneath. It feels like a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe.

When someone is dysregulated, their whole field narrows. There’s a kind of tunnel vision that sets in where everything begins to register as a threat. It comes from ancient survival mechanisms that we needed in hunter-gatherer societies, when the threat of a bear attacking the camp was real. But from inside that state of heightened nervous system arousal, it’s difficult to see beyond what’s immediately happening in the body. The mind starts reaching outward, thinking, “something needs to change so I can feel okay”. But what’s happening is internal; it’s like a contraction. Your system is pulling inward and asking, in the only way it knows how, to return to safety. This is a cry for love and understanding, not fixing.

I came to understand this in a very physical way through bodywork, where I initially believed I needed to apply as much pressure as possible, and if this structure and method were skilled and repeatable, that would reliably create a result for my clients. Over time, I began to notice the opposite was true. The more I tried to follow a plan, the less effective the work became. The sessions that actually created change felt quieter, less directed. There was a point where I stopped trying to think my way through what I was doing and instead began listening with my hands. In that listening, something subtle would happen. The tissue would begin to communicate, not loudly, but in small, beautiful ways. You could feel where something was holding, and more importantly, where it was willing to soften. If I followed that, if I moved with that, instead of pushing into resistance, the body would respond with a kind of unwinding that couldn’t be forced. And if I did try to force it, the body would simply hold. And it clicked for me: healing isn’t something you do to a body; it’s something that happens when the body feels safe enough to soften and direct its own healing.

Once I saw that, I began to recognize the same pattern everywhere else. In the way we think, the way we relate, the way we try to move through our lives, there is often a subtle or not-so-subtle pushing, an attempt to override what we feel, and control what’s happening to reach a different outcome. The mind wants something solid to rely on so it can feel safe, but it tends to run the same patterns over and over again, even when those patterns are no longer serving us. Most of the time, we’re inside those patterns without realizing it, responding to the present moment through something shaped by the past or through an anticipation of the future. However, there is a space where this begins to shift. Once you recognize it, you can begin to orient toward it. My friend calls it a kind of paradox, where more than one thing can exist at the same time, where you are no longer attached to being right, and instead you simply become present with what is actually happening.

This is deeply internal work, and it’s necessary to do it for ourselves rather than rely on another person to solve it for us. And at the same time, we don’t exist in isolation. We are constantly in relationships, influencing and being influenced. When I look back at my own life, I can see how I’ve followed something I didn’t yet have language for. It’s a kind of quiet pull, a curiosity, something that feels alive. It led me into different relationships, teachers, and experiences, often in seasons of deep immersion followed by a natural shift in my understanding of myself and the world. I come into alignment or orbit with something or someone for a time. I move closely with it and learn what is there to learn, and then the orbit widens. Nothing has gone wrong; something has simply completed. And this is the flow of following our inner guidance, flow doesn’t mean everything stays, it often means everything moves.

So it’s not about finding the right person or the right path that will finally give you the answer. It’s about learning how to recognize what resonates in the moment and trusting that enough to follow it, even when it doesn’t make logical sense. Sometimes that leads you outward, and sometimes it brings you back inward, but most of the time it’s both. Nothing outside of you is the source of your healing, and at the same time, everything around you can support you in accessing it. Peace isn’t the absence of reaction or the elimination of the parts of yourself that feel messy or uncomfortable. But if we cultivate the ability to notice what’s happening while it’s happening, and in that noticing, a space opens, there’s something to celebrate there. Something new becomes possible. Healing begins to feel less like fixing and more like staying close enough to your own experience while remaining interconnected with the whole. I’ve learned to sense where there is already a subtle softening in the body, or the mind, or the spirit. To cultivate a quiet movement from something rigid or fearful toward something more open, more curious, more alive—and being willing to follow that, even when the only instruction is to meet it with love.