Emma Kenny

Lately I have been pondering a great deal about love, what it is, why it is and of course the issues that occur from experiencing, or indeed failing to experience it.

I have worked for many years with clients who I believe have suffered on the whole from a poverty of love. These clients may have fundamentally encountered many different life issues, dependency, low self-esteem, depression, feelings of deep and tragic isolation etc., but what has often made the difference between a relatively straightforward healing process and a process with great complexity tends to come down to love.

So if I meet a client who has fell into a deep depression after the loss of a loved one, so long as they feel and felt loved there tends to be a process of healing and acceptance; this takes time and is painful, but it often appears that the love that formed the bond also creates a foundation that protects the individual from remaining unhappy. Very often in fact the individual finds that they grow further and learn to love harder through the experience.

Now imagine a client with a similar experience who walks into my office, only the relationship that has been lost was more complex in nature. Imagine that they questioned the authenticity of the lost relationship and the love that ‘should’ have existed between the two parties.

Very often it is these questions that cause the greatest of pain.

It is knowing that we are and have been ‘authentically’ loved that allows a simplicity in grief; yes unbelievably painful, but linear in experience.

I have experienced my tragedies in life, deep and wounding with moments where I believed I would drown in the darkness of the deep, black nothing….but instead, with the words, company, reassurances of others, I found my way back to shore….albeit on my father’s back at times.

You see love somehow weaves its way around the most broken people returning their pieces to the original positions albeit for a few chips here and there.

I struggled with love for so many years; self-love and indeed the trust to love others. Fortunately, the blueprint that my parents created equipped me to find such intensity when I had my first child. From considering myself an incredibly cold person; known as the ice queen at work for my steely ability to deal with some unimaginably horrible cases without any real impact on my own emotional state, I transformed into a warm and nurturing mother and woman.

Essentially, even when we are loved, we need to allow its warmth to flow into each and every organ, deep through our veins and into our souls, we need to turn toward it, to accept it and of course to believe we deserve it.

Whilst it’s not PC to say, I genuinely feel that the reason I am good at my job is because I love my clients. Yes I may not love them in a way that means I take them home, adopt them and get them to call me mum, but I share the love I have for humanity with them.

I believe in teaching my clients what a good relationship feels like; a relationship that can then be replicated elsewhere.

Sometimes I can see how difficult my clients find being cared for, in these circumstances I actually turn the volume up and make the care even louder. I am always privileged and humbled that anyone would choose to share their journeys with me. This is why it is so easy to love and care for my clients; because they trust me and they deserve to be safely and authentically cared for.

Many professionals would criticise me for this belief system, (if you do, you need to be loved more yourself, only good things can come from love and this means there is nothing to fear) but it works for me and my clients and that will do for me.

Of course learning to be loved is at times challenging, my own partner simply grabbed on and refused to let go, (though I did try to prise him off a couple of times) and I guess that this is one of my greatest lessons, that another can love us with such intensity and integrity that they can in fact transform us.

He transformed me, I cannot look back to that woman I once was. He taught me the privilege of safety, the joy of true connection and the loyalty that is so effortless and unwritten that it doesn’t need to be mentioned. Essentially, he loved me in spite of myself, and in doing so helped me to love myself (yes I know it might pang of co-dependency but believe me I am incredibly happy and considered well-adjusted so it works for me.)

And I guess that’s the main part of what my blog is about today, the fact that we can all love each other more. Spreading love can involve a smile, a kind word, a knock on the door of that old lady we know who lives alone at the bottom of the street.

We can remember to answer conflict with care and anger with understanding. Love is always freeing, forming and positive and it’s available to all of us as long as we believe we deserve it…..and all of us deserve it.

So today I am reminding you (possibly preaching a bit….so sorry about that but this is pretty darned important to me)that a world full of more loving people means a world full of happier people and wouldn’t that be a better world for us and our children to live in?

I don’t want utopia, I don’t want heaven on earth and I don’t want a perfect impossible world. I want what is entirely achievable.

So if you know an individual with a poverty of love, try and share a little of your own because the tiniest flicker can turn into the greatest of fires.

 

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