Love is your Super Power

My creative daughter made capes for all my grandsons’ fellow pre-schoolers for Valentine’s Day. They all said, Love is my super power.
What a lovely message for Valentine’s Day. I have been thinking about that message and imagining twenty little boys and girls whizzing around in their lives with that message on their backs.
What if it was true for all of us?
If love is our super power how does that super power show up in our lives? In my life loving myself enough to be authentic and vulnerable about who I really am creates the space and safety for other people to be authentic and vulnerable as well. That is my superpower. Other people can sense that energy in me. I can sense the energy of a person who is willing to be authentic and vulnerable and I  am attracted to that energy. Self-acceptance helps my superpower manifest. Harsh judgement impedes my superpower. Judging myself for my harsh judgement is like my kryptonite. Recognizing when I am judging myself and accepting that I am judging is the antidote to the kryptonite. Rocognition and Acceptance of judgement repairs judgement.
When we are children and we feel strong feelings there is often no support for experiencing, expressing and releasing those feelings. At least that was true for me as a child. My parents weren’t skillful about accepting their own strong feelings and therefore coached me by example in learning to suppress mine. Emotion is energy in motion. If the energy of emotion is experienced it can easily be released. When one of my small grandsons is sobbing and my daughter holds him he usually skips off in a matter of minutes. He has discharged the energy of the pain he is feeling by crying and being comforted and the pain has moved. If the pain isn’t released it begins to take up residency in our bodies. Repeated very painful experiences that are suppressed become trauma that is held in our bodies. Research is showing that the pain of trauma creates physical and emotional symptoms. What if giving ourselves more permission to discharge the emotions of mad, sad, glad and scared allows our super power to manifest?
When it’s not safe to feel our feelings we make up stories about ourselves in lieu of releasing them. I’m not lovable, or there’s something wrong with me are two of my favorite stories. As children we turn these stories into strategies to make the world make sense. I’m not good enough or I’m to blame are two stories a lot of people learned to use on themselves to avoid the lonliness and terror of strong feelings felt alone. For instance children often blame themselves for their parents divorcing. If only I was a better girl, my parents wouldn’t have been so mad at each other. This is a common story that becomes a strategy of needing to be perfect for children who blame themselves for their parents divorse. Children who are supported in feeling all of their own strong feelings about their parents divorcing and clearly reassured that the divorse had nothing to do with anything they did can let go of their self-blame stories or maybe not create them in the first place.
When we notice we are judging ourselves or others we can use our super power of love to recognize the judgement, be kind to ourselves and address the authentic feelings we are having underneath the judgement. When I am judging another person it is often that their differences from me scare me. When I can be with myself and ask myself to be willing to embrace my fear and express the energy of it the fear can release and the judgement can dissolve. When I do this work I am often left with a feeling of connection with the person I was judging. Let’s say I am judging someone for having a large body. Looking underneath, I can feel my own fear about having a large body. I can shake or cry and even share that fear with another person, other than the one I am judging. Then I have used my super power to allow myself to feel connected to the person I was judging. I can see that other people experience pain and pleasure too. Other people are suffering and experiencing joy like I am, too.In this way I can use my super power of love to experience the oneness of all beings. Such a gift. I am grateful for my super power of love and I commit to using it to love myself and others. My intention is to support others in knowing that love is the superpower of all of us. What if  all of us could don our capes and and take as our mission to use our lives to practice our super power of love and heal  ourselves, each other and the planet? What if each of us in our own small and large ways feel good  about ourselves for all the ways we manifest love every day? What if that would grow our love to celebrate ourselves for loving in all the ways we do every day? Do you accept this mission? Nod your head and feel your cape shimmer.