On Naming Love

The last time I went to visit my family, I had a long discussion with my sisters about love languages. The idea of love languages comes from a book by the same title, and in it, the author identifies different ways that we communicate our love to each other. The five languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. We talked about how this affects our relationships, whether they're family, friends, or romantic. Some of the more difficult moments in many relationships in my life has been the result of not understanding how they were trying to love me.

Quality time is my primary love language, which is probably one reason why I sometimes feel outside of my comfort zone in this practice. Although it is true that we should be aware of and respect one another's ways of loving, it is also true that exploring other ways of loving expands our capacity to love. When we identify resistance in our experience, maybe we hate receiving gifts, for example, we can look a little deeper and uncover why we resist certain ways of loving and being loved.

Gratitude, at it's heart, is about loving others through naming the ways they have loved us. It is identifying the ways that a person has positively affected us--maybe in ways that aren't our natural love language. Gratitude is about letting others know that we see that love, whether it's a hug, or a care package, or a letter in the mail.