A JOURNEY INTO LOVE: THE ECHO OF MY SOUL

I have longed for the kind of love that would consume me, that would sweep me off my feet, that would make me feel seen in ways I never thought possible.

Surprisingly, I have actually experienced that in ALL of my relationships I’ve ever had, but it came at a cost of me sacrificing something. I wanted love, but not just any love—the deep, passionate, intense kind that I believed was the essence of true connection. I have spent much of my life searching for love, because in all the passion and intensity love can bring, I realized, I’ve only ever experienced it partly. And in that search, I didn’t realize that although I have experienced the love that I am talking about, I was sacrificing more than just my time, energy, and heart. I was sacrificing my very soul.

For so long, I was taught that love meant giving all of yourself—without hesitation, without boundaries. That love was this deep, all-encompassing sacrifice, where you place the other person’s needs before your own. And I believed it. I believed that if I could just love deeply enough, just be enough for the person in front of me, I would finally feel the kind of love I yearned for, in its entirety. However, in doing so, I lost myself. I was giving pieces of myself away to people who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give them back to me in whole.

I never was the “other woman,” but in every relationship I’ve had up until my mid 30’s, I’ve always been second. Not in the obvious sense, where someone is physically or emotionally cheating, but in the quiet, insidious way that I allowed my needs, my voice, and my heart to come second to everything else. Every. Single. Time. I sacrificed parts of myself because I thought it was what love required. And in doing so, I began to question: Was it ever really love if I was always sacrificing myself to maintain it? Was it really love if I couldn’t show up as my full self?

In these spaces, I became invisible. I was left with a haunting sense that I wasn’t worthy of fighting for. That I wasn’t worthy of being heard. That I wasn’t good enough to be the priority. I felt unlovable in a way that was hard to articulate—like I could only ever be part of the equation, never the whole. This feeling gnawed at my soul, as I quietly believed I could never be loved wholly for who I truly was. Not if I wasn’t willing to sacrifice everything for someone else.

“Am I not enough?”

The hardest truth I had to face was that, in these relationships, I wasn’t loving myself. I wasn’t setting the boundaries I needed to feel whole. And, in the process, I missed the opportunity to truly love in the way I deserved. I wasn’t respecting my own needs, and in doing so, I invited others to do the same.

I would often feel that I was not enough, because in essence, they were giving me what I deeply wanted. It was the deep, passionate, and intense love that I so desperately craved. I can confidently say that I know what it feels like to be made love to, because that was the majority of our interactions whenever it came time to be intimate. I was consistently heard, and we engaged in deep, soulful, and spiritual conversations, but it only progressed as far as behind closed doors.

It wasn’t until I sat with this truth that the healing began. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it broke me open in ways I didn’t expect. I cried for days—three days, to be exact—grieving the pieces of myself I had lost, and the years spent believing that love meant erasing myself. But it was also the beginning of something far more powerful. In those tears, I found clarity. I realized that the love I’d been searching for outside of myself could only be found within. And I learned that I had been chasing the wrong thing all along.

Don’t get me wrong, I have natural characteristics that define me as a lover, both familial, platonic and intimately. I am an intensely passionate person, and I genuinely love to connect deeply with someone’s spirit and soul, even if our relationship is just one of friendship. Therefore, to have an intimate lover only magnifies this desire for connection, BUT to feel the intensity of these emotions in their full capacity, I have come to realize that I must first find true love within myself.

This journey has reshaped the way I see love. True love begins with self-love. True love begins with honoring myself, my boundaries, my needs, and my voice. It begins with knowing that I am worthy of being loved as a whole person, not just in parts. And it begins with the radical acceptance that I do not have to sacrifice myself to experience the kind of love that fills me up, that lifts me up, and that allows me to show up fully, as I am.

I’ve experienced all kinds of love—the fiery, the passionate, the deep, the quiet—and again, none of it was truly love until I learned to love myself first. Now, I walk forward with the understanding that no love outside of myself can ever fill the emptiness I once carried. I now know the importance of showing up for me, honoring me, and giving myself the love I’ve always craved. Only then can I give that love freely to others and experience it on a deeper levels than ever before. Clearly this excites me. The natural and deep lover soul that I have.

This journey is ongoing. It’s not perfect. There are days when the old wounds resurface, when the whispers of “you’re not good enough” echo in my mind. But every time I choose myself—every time I set a boundary, every time I honor my worth—I take one more step toward becoming whole. And this love, this love that starts with me, will be the foundation of all the love I’ll give to others.

In the end, the greatest lesson I’ve learned is this: Love doesn’t require sacrifice of your soul. It requires the full expression of your being, your truth, and your worth. It starts with loving yourself first. Only then will you ever truly know what it means to be loved completely.

And for that, I am eternally grateful.

“SONO FATTO DI’ AMORE E TEMPESTA”

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