Love

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

Four Loves - C.S Lewis

We have all experienced the pain and heart break of love, whether it be romantic, parental, sibling, vocational or spiritual.

Love comes in many forms and it is the one thing which is truly universal, can cause the greatest hurt, the deepest growth and most wonderful joys. Love  also changes us. The quote above suggests how we  lock ourselves away from love through work, the internet (Oh yes, including Facebook) money and all those other distractions we might use to ease the hurts.

So how can we begin the journey of understanding our past hurts, let downs and also the gifts of love in our life?

When we can separate some of the strong emotions we have connected to love in a non threatening, safe and gentle way, we start this process and change our emotional reaction to memories and events. One way of doing this is art journaling, this uses colour, words, symbols and pictures as the medium to express yourself in a creative and enjoyable way. You can start this by writing/drawing the word love in the centre of a sheet of paper. Without thinking too much write, draw and colour all the words, images and symbols that come to you. You may want to add in different colours to the words of love you want to grow and flourish.  Art journaling is one of the tools used in Druid Therapy, for more information about how we can work together with art journaling  contact me to start this healing process.

Walk in beauty and peace,
Caroline.