the art of loving
what love teaches us about ourselves
For R.K.
Lately, I’ve been pondering what it really means to love and to be loved. No, this isn’t a dissertation on love. I know better than to pretend I’ve figured it out. Rather, I’ve come to believe that life presents us with endless opportunities to learn what it means to open our hearts, to risk heartbreak in the name of deepening our capacity to love and, in turn, to know ourselves more fully.
I realize that not everyone has access to feeling, and I feel deeply fortunate that, for whatever reason, I seem to be hardwired to feel so much. As a young person, I often resented that sensitivity. I saw emotion as weakness. To feel deeply was to risk being misunderstood. And for years, being highly sensitive felt like a misfortune.
But as I approach my forty-ninth year, I feel nothing but gratitude for the little one inside me—the part of me who still moves through the world leading with her whole heart. The one who wants so deeply to love, to show others that a joyful spirit, a kindness of heart, and a generosity of presence and attention are salves that can shift our relationship with ourselves and one another, and perhaps open a doorway to feeling for the first time.
In this way, I’ve come to understand that living artfully is inextricably linked to the art of loving—falling in love with the details, seeing the mosaic of life, recognizing how every season shapes who we are becoming. If we are fortunate, we begin to glimpse what life is truly about: not clenching or grasping, but simply allowing ourselves to surrender and be moved.
It is through the highs and lows, the challenges and small wonders, the moments of heartbreak and self-tenderness, that we begin to understand love as practice—loving ourselves fiercely, discerning what we need most, learning to metabolize the feast that is our life. And when we do, clarity arrives at the door of the heart, whispering what was true all along: we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
The art of loving oneself is where it begins, and from that place, we learn how to love another—to give love, yes, but also to receive it, to let it alter us in ways that heal.
What possibilities unfold when we surrender to what wants to take shape? That, I think, is the quiet invitation: to ask the question, to sit in the not-knowing, and to truly live the answer.
Love, in all its forms, asks us to stay open, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it asks more of us than we expected. Maybe the art of loving is less about finding answers and more about continuing to show up with our hearts intact, ready to be moved again and again.
© Alana Foy 2025
