My love language

Not so long ago, a coach asked me what my love language was. I had to sit with it for a while.

The question arose out of a conversation about money as an expression of love. I come from what we now call a mixed class background, and as a result I have a complicated relationship to money. I speak rich fluently but harbor a deep distrust of money both as an indicator of ability or worth, and in particular as an expression of appreciation or love.

At the end of the day, what matters to me is presence and honesty. That is how I experience love and how I express it too. Presence and honesty are the values I tend to prioritize, no matter the context, principles that function as a north star when I feel lost. If I had to summarize this love language in just one word it would be authenticity.

I don’t know that I have had this clarity before, and in many ways it doesn’t matter. Did I always feel presence and honesty were core? Also not important. (It also doesn’t mean I am able to be authentically present at all times — far from it. I aspire).

What I know is this: arriving here as been a journey and I have been deviated in part by trusting my sense of logic over all else. If the coach had asked what my core values were (as opposed to my love language), I would probably have landed on something else, something related to justice. I would have considered my several decades in human rights research and advocacy as a clear indication that justice is important to me (and obviously it is).

But even though justice matters deeply to me, throughout that work, what has mattered most have been clear moments of authentic presence. Connections born out of honesty. The presence of love in pain. This is not something I know with my head. It is a knowledge anchored in my body and — if you want to be lofty about it — soul. It is weighty and light at the same time.

It really just is.