I feel like a little girl, running home with my latest crayola “work of art”, hoping against hope that it will be acceptable enough to be posted on the fridge. I guess since I did not get the appreciation and kudos for any of my efforts as a child, I am making up for it in my seniorhood. So here is my amateurish interpretation of a Georgia O’Keefe masterpiece. It gave me great joy to create it, no matter how raw and unschooled, so I humbly share it with you. No kudos necessary!
Ah well, hopefully this phase of needing approval will be shortlived, because…in a very powerful yet quiet way…I am learning to release all of that old, needy, unworthy baggage I’ve been lugging around and replacing it with love, beautiful light and self worth, which doesn’t even come with matching luggage. Nice. A bit late in life, but as they say, better late than never!
So, on this eve of V-Day, a celebration that was romanticized in the poems of Chaucer, I would love to share the essence of this day, and hope you all pay it forward to anyone and everyone. The grocery checker, the landscaper, the aggressive driver cutting you off on the freeway (I know, that’s a tough one!) This is not a day to go out and spend $160 (the projected national average for consumer purchases to express love tomorrow). It is a day to remember what it means to love and be loved. Pure, unadulterated, from-the-heart LOVE. And not because Hallmark tells you to. Love for no reason, other than because you are happy to be alive and you are grateful for the air you breath and the time you have to share with yourself, your partner, your family, your friends, your community, the plants and animals who share the earth with us. All of that and more.
H and I were married on a beach in Maui on V-Day twelve years ago. We’ve been married fifteen if you count the living-in-sin years before marriage. We chose V-Day for the heightened appreciation for love that we share on this day, minus the kitsch and cliches. With whales breaching and my dearest friend sharing our joy, we exchanged our vows on Makena Beach. We have shared a lot of what we like to call “added value” in the last 15 years, working together 24/7 (until I retired), supporting each other through three cancers, survivng the family crises that no longer plague our hearts, weathering the global financial collapse that devastated so many in the last decade. We are grateful to be together and to be in love. And we are grateful to have grown in our minds, bodies and spirits to be better than we were when we first joined.
Sending beaucoup d’amour et lumiere…
Feb. 13, 2015
Judy Richter 