When we speak from Love, that also means saying what is loving for us. Sometimes speaking from Love means saying No in some way. Speaking from a place of Love may be saying: Please don’t speak to me that way. If you continue to speak to me that way, I will hang up the phone or leave the room. And then we do, we follow through. We love ourselves first, otherwise we will have a difficult time loving others. When we come from a place of love, we are empowered. Love is the most powerful force in the Universe! If we are strongly grounded between the cosmos and the earth, our Higher Divine Self and our human self, we are in that pillar of loving energy. From that loving place, we can be strong and assertive, clear about what is loving and not loving to us. This is different than being aggressive. This is being present and aware of what is happening in the here and now.

I often encourage people – and remind myself – to speak from Love. I know this is not easy. It sounds too simple and impossible all at the same time! We have so much history and baggage with some people, it’s hard not to be reactive, especially when we are triggered because of patterns with them or because of other people before them.

When we are strongly grounded in the loving energy that is our true nature, our essence, we are present and we are able to assess what is happening right now in the current situation: Is there truth in what is being said? What is true for me? Am I afraid to say what is true? Am I telling myself stories about what I think the other person is thinking? Do I feel safe? What is really happening here? Am I being pressured to come up with an answer this moment? Letting Love speak may be saying: I have to think about this and we will talk about it later. And then making sure we are willing to talk about it later. Coming from a place of Love means not punishing the other person because we resent them for not getting our way. Loving can mean compromising, where both people give something up, because they love each other. This goes for friends as well as intimate relationships. We can always compromise, as long as we are not compromising our Self, our integrity.

Speaking from Love may mean: I would like this, what do you want? I really want to hear. And then you meet somewhere in the middle. That kind of compromise is loving. Loving means being true to yourself, but not necessarily getting everything we want the way we want. To me, intimacy is knowing yourself, and then being willing to share that with appropriate people. When we speak from Love, we are willing to share ourselves . . . or at the very least, be kind. We find ways to say the truth, kindly. We are speaking about ourselves, not making judgments about another (we make”I” statements). We are willing to risk (again, in appropriate situations) to say what we feel directly, to give the other person an opportunity respond. When we withhold information, we deprive the other person of the opportunity to respond, thus we are trying to control the situation. Perhaps our reasoning is we don’t want to upset the other person, but perhaps we really don’t want to hear the answer. When we have information, we have awareness, and then we can make a choice.

When we speak from Love, we might articulate our desires; and then ask the other person what their desires are. And we need to be courageous enough and vulnerable enough to do this. This takes courage because we may not hear what we want, and we are vulnerable when we say what is true for us . . . again, not knowing if it is true for the other person. It’s hard to hear that what we want is not what the other person wants. This fear can create a stranglehold on a relationship of any kind . . . and fear is the least amount of Love. Love helps us blossom; fear constricts and shuts down our loving feeling, and then we feel disconnected from our Source of Love, Spirit and our Higher Self, our Loving Essence. It’s like being stranded and parched in a desert with the nectar to sustain us right next to us, if only we’d look around, instead of focusing on the fear that is waving its arms in front of us, demanding our attention.

And sometimes, the most loving thing to do is leave a relationship, a friendship, a job. We speak from Love, first to ourselves. We become aware, if we are willing, to realize this is not the most loving situation for us anymore. We do this for us, not against anyone else. And yes, we may be sad and grieving . . . and it may still be the most loving thing we can do for ourselves. It can be both. This is being human, and being the Love we are.