“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
― Lao Tzu
"Love is a decision. Not an emotion.”
― Lao Tzu
"Confidence and love alone cast out fear."
- Ernest Holmes
"The mysterious energy of Love is the active principle of unity. Everything loves, and
everything responds to love."
-Ernest Holmes
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
— Oscar Wilde
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu
“Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
— Sir Bell Hooks
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”
– Mark Twain
"Love will find a perfect way."
- Ernest Holmes
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
– John Green
“Loved you yesterday, love you still, always have, always will.”
– Elaine Davis
“I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more.”
– Angelita Lim
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Thinking of you keeps me awake. Dreaming of you keeps me asleep. Being with you keeps me alive.”
– Unknown
“I need you like a heart needs a beat.”
– Unknown
“When I say I love you more, I don’t mean I love you more than you love me. I mean I love you more than the bad days ahead of us, I love you more than any fight we will ever have. I love you more than the distance between us, I love you more than any obstacle that could try and come between us. I love you the most.”
– Unknown
”I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I swear I couldn’t love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.”
– Leo Christopher
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
– A. A. Milne
“A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.”
– Brendan Francis
”I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
– Pablo Neruda
”Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
– Oscar Wilde
“You make me want to be a better man.”
– Melvin Udall
“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”
– Sarah Dessen
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
– Anais Nin
“He is not a lover who does not love forever.”
– Euripides
“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”
– Jane Austen
“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
– James Baldwin
“In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing.”
– Jack Kornfield
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment. Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
– Bette Davis
“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.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
– Pablo Neruda
“Love is a thing that is full of cares and fears.”
– Ovid
“Love is not love until love’s vulnerable.”
– Theodore Roethke
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
– Dr. Seuss
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
– Pablo Neruda
“Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.”
– Nicholas Sparks
“Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.”
– Ben Hecht
“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul; that makes us reach for more, that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. That’s what I hope to give you forever.”
– Noah from The Notebook
“I would rather spend one lifetime with you, than face all the ages of this world alone.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“To be your friend was all I ever wanted; to be your lover was all I ever dreamed.”
– Valerie Lombardo
”My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.”
– André Breton
”A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
”Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.”
– Elinor Glyn
”Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
“Love is the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person.”
– James Thurber
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.”
– Sophocles
“Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.”
– William Arthur Ward
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
– Andre Gide
“This has been my life; I found it worth living.”
– Bertrand Russell
“We must be our own before we can be another’s.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
– Confucius
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
– Rumi
“Only true love can fuel the hard work that awaits you.”
– Tom Freston
“Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”
– Vincent van Gogh
“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there’s love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
– Ella Fitzgerald
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.”
– Judy Collins
“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
– Buddha
“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”
– William Shakespeare
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
– Marilyn Monroe
“I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”
– Natalie Cole
“I hope you know that every time I tell you to get home safe, stay warm, have a good day, or sleep well what I am really saying is I love you. I love you so damn much that it is starting to steal other words’ meanings. ”
– Open-365
“The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
– Dalai Lama
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
– William Shakespeare
“You call it madness, but I call it love.”
– Don Byas
“We can only learn to love by loving.”
– Iris Murdoch
“A life lived in love will never be dull.”
– Leo Buscaglia
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
– Victor Hugo
“All you need is love.”
– Paul McCartney
“True love stories never have endings.”
– Richard Bach
“Love is shown more in deeds than in words.”
– Saint Ignatius
“Love is not a volunteer thing.”
– Samuel Richardson
“Love is friendship on fire.”
– Susan Sontag
“Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.”
– Tom Wolfe
“Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
– Franklin P. Jones
“The love we give away is the only love we keep.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.”
– Houssaye
“Trust your intuition and be guided by love.”
– Charles Eisenstein
“That’s all nonviolence is – organized love.”
– Joan Baez
“We love because it’s the only true adventure.”
– Nikki Giovanni
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt, Sing like there’s nobody listening, And live like it’s heaven on earth.”
– William W. Purkey
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Age does not protect you from love, but love to some extent protects you from age.”
– Jeanne Moreau
“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”
– Washington Irving
“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.”
– Marge Piercy
“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.”
– Barbara De Angelis
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert
”I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert
“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.”
– Madame de Stael
“Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.”
– George Jean Nathan
“Love is more than a noun – it is a verb; it is more than a feeling – it is caring, sharing, helping, sacrificing.”
– William Arthur Ward
“Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.”
– Barbara De Angelis
“We need not think alike to love alike.”
– Francis David
“Love is a great master. It teaches us to be what we never were.”
– Moliere
“Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.”
– Felix Adler
“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love.”
– Lao Tzu
“When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.”
– Dalai Lama
“Love is sharing your popcorn.”
– Charles Schultz
“Love is being stupid together.”
– Paul Valery
“If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?”
– Lily Tomlin
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
– Albert Einstein
“Love is like pi – natural, irrational, and very important.”
– Lisa Hoffman
“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”
– Robert Fulghum
“Love is something sent from heaven to worry the hell out of you.”
– Dolly Parton
Posted on April 3, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
LOVE BLOOMS BIGGER ON EASTER
TheLovingGarden.com is now accepting submissions to help those in need
Plant a Seed of Love * Love Blooms * Your Love Helps Others from Love
St. Croix, USVI, April 4, 2021: The seed of a Love Legacy idea planted 10 years ago to help others, all in the name of love, http://www.thelovinggarden.com/ came into bloom on Valentine’s Day 2021.
The Garden was finally created after the Founder’s mother passed away from Covid in May 2020. She focused on Love to get her through her grief and the mission is to share the power and strength of love with others, especially at a time when we are all navigating this collective pain of the last year.
This Easter, April 4, 2021 THE LOVING GARDEN blooms even bigger with the opening for submissions to request help in the name of love – the requesters are known as Flowers of Love Recipients.
THE LOVING GARDEN honors the grief of anyone who plants a flower seed of love in the virtual garden in the honor of a loved one, even self love, one love, any kind of unconditional love.
The flowers seeds of love will go on to bloom love to the Flowers of Love Recipients in need of love, covid relief support, counseling, aid, shelter, funeral expenses, childcare and so much more.
“It is time to sow love and reap love as a collective.” says [Lori Freed], Founder, The Loving Garden Inc. “It’s time, more than ever to begin our collective healing journey and rise up while lending a hand and heart to another who needs help getting up, hence Flowers of Love Recipients who can now come to the Garden to request support. The more Flower seeds of love planted (ie: donations) in the Garden, the more we can help and heal hearts faster.”
Ms. Freed says it is the Full Circle of Love. “Healing the grief begins with honoring and accepting why it exists. Because love existed. And still does. Always will. It does not leave when we endure a loss. The Loving Garden exists to honor both the grief and the love and to bloom LOVE on and to make sure all know they do not have to grief alone and the ME turns into a WE for healing and love gained not lost.”
Please visit http://www.thelovinggarden.com/ and honor those you love while helping others in need of love and assistance. Including yourself.
Bloom Love On... ###
Posted on April 3, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
Posted on April 2, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
I was doing my exercise walk and formulating a lot more for the loving garden meeting coming up on zoom, and a truck slowed down for me to pass an intersection on a country road. I walked faster as I could see he was waiting to turn. I waved as a thank you and he rolled down his window and he said something and I said ‘what was that?’ and he said ‘ladies always have the right of way.’
I bowed in gratitude and then I changed his very nice comment to ‘love always has the right of way.’
Yes love always has the right of way at any intersection of our lives.
And on my walk this is what appears.
Yes love has the right away and if you are love, you are living the right way.
Posted on April 2, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
The winds of Grief came and swept me up like a tornado and left me battered and torn.
In the stillness of a windless day hence- I have chosen to honor both. But I choose to fly in remembrance in the winds love, always.
—-Lori Freed
Posted on April 1, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
Posted on April 1, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
This phrase comes into my thought process so very often. It just pops in like an uninvited guest who will keep showing up and repeating themselves until you actually stop and just allow the conversation to be had. It’s because all they really want is to be heard.
And so the saying, “Let it go, Let it all go” is what I heard when I took my heart for its familiar walk along the coast of the Pacific in California a couple of months after my mother passed away from Covid. I have been taking my heart for a walk along the shores since the early 1990s, where much of my writings were created on those very beaches at sunset.
And this particular days heart walk, I know it wasn’t my voice in the silent saying this, it was my mothers. The tremendous amount of heartbreak, grief, fear and now responsibility of handling her affairs that resulted in such egregious behavior from others who supposedly loved her because she finally gave me a voice and trusted me to handle her affairs with transparency and love.
The compounding shock and grief of the last month of suffering of my mothers life with the horrific aftermath of the final fall out from those labeled “family“, in this lifetime, was a weight that was crushing the breath out of the very heart that was broken and crying on the walk.
“Let it go, Let it all go” over these past months of it replaying with every step wherever I am wandering lost once again in the lost and found of life – and hunkering down somewhere to rest a spell – as I had to criss-cross the country since May 2020 to handle moms affairs on my own – of facing my fears and grief picking up shattered pieces of her life and mine while simultaneously navigating a deadly pandemic, my own health challenge awareness, and behaviors of others that is completely antithesis to love… When I hear the saying now, like I am this morning as I write this, what it translates to me now is, nothing and nobody deserves to make you suffer ever again. Let me go and all the storylines, pain, fear, and tears from the storylines you have lived that have brought you to this point.
So if I let it all go, all the feelings and emotions and thoughts less than loving in its purest form, I have permission to let them go. And I have, because I asked myself how I choose to live the rest of my days and what do I want my life to FEEL like from here on. Not look like or sound like or any other five senses, but what do I want to feel…?
And I know in the very heart that was shattered on the heart walk almost 8 months ago, this phrase came from my mother. She wanted me to be freed from the storylines that were never mine to own of fear and suffering.
If I do not let it go, let it all go then how can I give purpose to the pain authentically, how can I honor love and my mother if I have an attachment to what that love felt like that was less than love itself.
In letting it all go on every level mentally, emotionally, physically, materialistically, financially and just walk on, that is what I walk and take with me; the love that never died.
This is being the ultimate beneficiary, the ultimate peace, the ultimate freedom, the ultimate truth. It is the one and only gift my mother has ever really given me that acknowledges she always did love me through my decades of questioning such. She gave me the ultimate gift of love in the end… what I had longed for since a child sequestered to the shadows of attention because chaos and anarchy reined since the beginning of my memories forming.
And finding the writings and letters to my mom through my decades, chasing her love and asking for nothing else, I understand now she had nothing left to give and by loving me while here would have put me in jeopardy of more suffering by the hands of another. So, by not showing me affection or diverting attention away from another and choosing me she was actually protecting me and she took the suffering upon herself like an invisible note I never knew was there until she passed away and it revealed itself.
In her releasing herself from the pain and suffering not only from Covid, but I understand now from every level of her being, she freed herself and in her freedom, she gave me mine. What I lived as conditional love, the fallacy of love- always affirmed there was more to love and chose to delve “into the kite“ and my life‘s journey, her choosing to die, I know that in itself was an act of unconditional love. Finally. For herself. And for me.
She let go, she let it all go… and I have too now.
We are both at peace and free to love without pain or fear.
We let go to let the love live on.
Thank you Mom
Posted on March 29, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
(Written April 19, 2020 7:14pm – Arizona – on the ‘Grief and Resurrection’ Road trip chapter of my life. Turned out another level of grief was waiting for me in the shadows shortly hereafter.)
I just read a Hafiz Poem from a book on a shelf in this peaceful abode where I threw a dart at a map and ran away from the pain and trauma engulfing me. I am now self- isolating in the silence trying to drown out the noise of the heavy artillery called life’s war raging on my heart.
His poem is about accepting everything and that is love. And that is when you know God.
Hmmm, it’s interesting because it says forgiveness gives you peace and forgiveness is really acceptance.
Do you accept what happened? It does not mean you agree with it – just accept it because it’s outside your control and so much grief happens of trying to control things outside our control.
Everyone is on their journey. Everyone is at a place they chose. I need to learn from
Everyone.
And everyone is on their own wisdom timetable, their own truth timetable, their own acceptance timetable, their own forgiveness timetable.
And most of all, their own love timetable.
If I can accept everything and everyone and every experience and every moment that has ever transpired; especially the ones that cause pain and suffering… if I can accept every single molecule of my journey then I am freed. !?!?!
So much I do not agree with and perhaps the pain was necessary but by accepting all and everyone and actions including my own then I release any sense of ego-meaning control – of what I cannot control – meaning I also release the suffering that partners with control.
And then I win that which is released – and love blooms everywhere, in everything and in everyone, including me.
Can I accept this simple formula for my own peace and freedom to love without fear?
(Written 10 days before I received the call my mother got Covid. 27 days before she died. 3 months before the seed of The Loving Garden returned to my heart after a decade. 11 months later, The Loving Garden website bloomed into its Truth.)
Posted on March 29, 2021 by Dianne Lopez , Uncategorized
Love will not be sabotaged again.
If you try to sabotage love- out of any emotion that feels it ‘deserves it’ – to be ‘right’ – to feel power over something or someone –
You are not reflecting love.
You are reflecting your fear of it and what it represents – a worthiness without ulterior motives or conditions – in the giving or the receiving.
Real love cannot be controlled.
It is not meant to be controlled.
If you put limits on love, you put limits on your very own being. And will receive the same in return.
Do not sabotage yourself.
Do not sabotage your worth.
I know that path.
Choose the other path.
The one where fear cannot walk and wield the sword of sabotage.
The path of letting love breathe without controlling it –
That is your greatest power. Your Freedom you truly want.
-Lori Freed
Posted on March 19, 2021 by admin , Uncategorized
Written April 8, 2020 – (self isolating somewhere in Scottsdale, AZ on the solo road trip I took off on after a devastating call. I called this ‘The Grief Annihilation road trip.’ But soon learned the Annihilation wasn’t done yet. 2 weeks later the call came my mother had Covid-19.)
I AM YOU
Dear the One that carries Me,
Fear is the absence of Love.
I cannot live if you are in fear.
I hope you will choose me one day.
I will take all your fear away.
For I am your Home, your true peace.
I hold the love that washes away the fear
and waters the garden of your happiness,
your peace, your joy – for them all to grow.
Will you choose me?
I have been waiting for you.
Will you be with me now?
For I really am what you are seeking.
I have no fear to give. Share your support of me for otherwise,
I cannot reside in the love that I am.
And I AM you.
Can you hear me beating?
Come in to let me out.
Love,
Your Heart
Posted on March 18, 2021 by admin , Uncategorized
I could not get out in front of grief in 2020. I was immersed in it in every direction on the outside. On every level of my being on the inside; it was a complete tsunami wipeout.
Because of that immersion and submersion that felt as if I was 6 feet under ground like my mother whom I just buried due to COVID19… I felt like I died in a way too.
In that burial of deep grief of blackness that was consuming me, a feeling all too familiar over the decades of loss, I had a choice. I feel like I will just keep suffering the rest of my life, or choose another way to complete my own life.
I chose to complete my life not in suffering. I forced myself to open my eyes to the blackness, face the truth of why I am grieving so deeply…because I loved so deeply.
I chose the love and took that seed of Love in my heart and held on to it for dear life. Literally. I planted that for The Loving Garden to bloom from the pain. It had to.
It turns out I also grew out of the dirt just like flowers and now…there is greater purpose to my pain to all our collective pain.
It is to help others honor their grief and loved ones but choose the love to lead the rest of their lives.
Honor that Love, don’t let it get lost in the pain. Bloom that love from the pain and help others with that very love to help them through their pain too.
Give Love a greater purpose than the pain.
All of us can keep love alive. It is a choice, one we always had. Now we know for sure we can choose it.
Choose Love with me and let’s meet in the garden to bloom our loved ones on.
And ourselves.
Thank you.
TheLovingGarden.com
(Photo-2/14/2021 – the day Love rose again- TheLovingGarden.com officially went live and blooms love on.)
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