You Love Too Much

to give every pat of a clay vessel a proper pit fire, every fiber an honest weave

I got to thinking a lot yesterday about expressions of love, and how drastically variable it can differ between us. We have all these ways of measuring it, like ‘love languages’ and attachment styles, with a presupposition that certain ways are bad or good.

Somewhere in the process of loving others, which is a part of what it simply means to be human and woven in ecosystem—we are met with the reality that the love of ourselves is one of the most important layers of loving others and the world, and yet it IS a feedback loop. If we often don’t feel loved, so much especially as children, how can we truly love ourselves when it is time to be an individual in a world of individualism, expected to have perfect self-love in order to properly have permission to love others?

And the land itself, as a character, a person, a many persons, a body that expands out and then folds up into individuation but still connected by the roots - is a body that can receive infinite love, it is obvious in its offering, in its endless need for tending, offerings, attention and affection. So then, I also ask myself, is there ever too much love, if we too are connected by tendrils to the earth’s body and to one another given the same body ultimately birthed us? I don’t mean love we think exists within the worries of the hovering parent or jealous partner, or possessive ex, but the love that exists in us that has explicit permission to exponentially overflow. Love makes the world go round, literally.

Many of us have probably been told in our lifetimes at one point that our ‘love was too much’ or ‘not enough.’ I hadn’t realized how common this is until it happened to me, sitting there, tears streaming down my face, thinking, I just simply love. Standing before a beloved who both wants an infinite overflow and rejects that open heart, is the source of heart-aching madness. What does it mean to love too much or not enough?

Once I was also told by a teacher, Finisia Medrano, who was harsh and sometimes downright abusive with her words, when I was asking her why one of her students and ‘followers’ was being so unkind and strange to me when I simply want to do work with plants for the land together and be kind and supportive. She said, ‘you love too much.’ Basically telling me that this person was a leach on my work, was a waste of time, and isn’t worth trying to love in the way I love because they will only take from me. Not that they didn’t actually deserve infinite love, but for some people, they can’t truly allow it, out of fear of abandonment. I wonder what she’d say now, about me loving too much in other scenarios over and over, practically losing myself to the want to pour, just like she did towards her beloveds and lost them.

I too, do this famously. Not allow love out of fear of abandonment, just as I have experienced it on the other side. And yet I too, have loved so deeply, and allowed myself to be deeply loved a few times. Some relationships have stood the test of time, as over a long time trust is built, in the consistency, the magic of morphing and changing and relating and seeing that it is ok to give, and also receive. We do not have to trust people right away. If anything, I’m realizing, and perhaps you do too, as you get older, that people are incredibly hard to fully trust. Especially when you feel so connected and kin, those are the people that can fool you the most. We all want connection, sometimes in our want for connection, we can overlook red flags, the flags that tell us, you may have to love differently right now in this instance. I trust too easily, and I have felt more screwed over in the past 5 years than in my whole life combined.

And loving ourselves means, like Fin said, some people aren’t worth our time of day, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of infinite love. In that case, what was wanting to be given and shared so badly outwards, must be turned back to the self. Or, looked elsewhere, where it flows easily and it doesn’t have to come so hard. Or given in a different way.

We should not need to beg others to be kind to us, to show up for us or to give us love and affection, time and presence.

We play out the abandonment we felt as children with the people who come to us in our lifetimes, an experience that we didn’t even realize was abandonment. And abandonment doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t care, it also might mean they don’t feel safe giving their love either. But its funny right, how we play out the things that happened when we didn’t know better, and even when we convince ourselves something different is happening now, it is such a deeply etched groove and pattern that we can easily trick ourselves.

I’ve had this scenario play out a few times (in friendship and in romantic love and in spaces in between, even in garden spaces I began to tend and put heart strings too):

a meeting, a spark, a feeling in the chest of expansion

mutual opening, mutual presence, but some caution from me to see how it goes, not jump too hard in, but also leaning in because it feels right

given reassurance it is ok to jump hard in

jumping hard in, over time

feeling safety, and joy, the heart opening like a lotus with the reality of safety, not all at once but in beautiful layers, that it is safe to love to tend, and give attention

hard things happen in the world, in circumstances, in trauma that come up, the open heart vulnerable, an outside force disrupts the deep connection, or a coyote spirit perhaps, or a bulldozer

the lotus starts to close and guard a little, safety is lost

hurtful things are said and done, a garden is bulldozed or poisoned, and one pulls away the open heart expansion feeling

so the other pulls away the open heart expansion feeling back in shock because,

it doesn’t feel good to be giving the same love when the other is turned away, rejecting it or pushing it away, trying to destroy it, or degrade it, it feels like punishment or betrayal, so for protection, the one being rejected looks down, recoils affection, tenderness and care, the lotus flower withers

but inside the dark mud is still open arms, chest thrust forward, tendrils out, begging to be loved back like what was happening before, or what was being perceived as happening, and the pain is in the longing to simply love, and to be open and feel the joy of that feeling again, of being safe to expand

things gets said like, your love wasn’t enough, or now you’re loving me too much that i feel trapped

and alas, how can one not feel paralyzed? or abandoned?

and too with land, it is so easy to fall in love with every texture of dirt or plant or hillside, deer trail or wind tunnel. I have fell in love with so many spots of land to have to leave them, over and over and over. Even where I currently reside, I already predict heartbreak, because it is not ‘mine’ as our world tells us we can and have to own land to be safe, and monetize safety and the ability to love and tend a spot of dirt costs money. I already feel it because i’ve already begun to love the mud and the birds and the windswept seed heads of wild asters and its scary to begin to love and feel its imminent loss at the very same time

Finisia focused on wild-tending on public land because it operated outside of this idea of ownership, that we’re just tending for ourselves. My question is - how do we keep loving in those moments were we feel betrayed, abandoned or pushed away, or knowing we don’t actually own anything, or that everything constantly changes?

It hard to stay constantly unattached, attachment is suffering, but it would be nice to get to attach for awhile sometime

What if you were told : ‘You’re not allowed to love me, you’re not allowed to look at me like you love me, with the way you use your eyes to show love, it is a threat to me and others that I’m with now, or a threat to my autonomy’ What if the land told us this even as it was bulldozed or bombed? (true story I was told this once)

We simply just cannot deny what our hearts tell us. Even those who are unsafe to actively care for, we can still love with our eyes, our chests, our attentive hands and affections, or our silent prayers that they don’t know about.

It still doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, and that grief isn’t just a way of life. There’s no such thing as feeling too much, even as Fin told me I loved too much. This was said by someone who dedicated her life to planting seeds and trying to trick others into leaving society to do so too, and any other way was eco-cidal, which is basically true, but she loved so much, and was an utter wreck because of it, it was the death of her.

So we plant seeds even when we may never see the place again, we share our skills when others might take them and not need you anymore after that, what we plant will reverberate out, and what forms that takes is love.

I want opportunity to be in a place one day I never have to leave, that feels safe at least for awhile, even if with the plants as neighbors only, to give every inch of dirt upmost attention and love, to give every pat of a clay vessel a proper pit fire, every fiber an honest weave. IS that even real? As I watch what is happening in the holy lands, home and safety, life, community, family disintegrating just like that. Gone. What we all long for so deeply, even in the active displacement of others to get it, is home, belonging, to be able to pour infinitely to our kinship.