With her, I needed to find ways to love a child I wasn’t always sure even liked me. I needed to learn how to give out love that was not always obviously given back. This was love the choice, the decision, the action, and I had to learn how to do it as I went along. I learned to still say the words “I love you.” I learned to say them even when I didn’t feel like saying them. I learned to say them when they were only returned with a mumbled “love you” as my daughter bolted out of the car in the school drop-off line. I learned to say them when they were not returned or acknowledged at all. I learned to still say them, because no matter what, they were (and are) still true. I learned to speak love in other languages. I learned to speak it in the dialects of small gifts and acts of service. I spoke it by stocking up on the protein bars my high-schooler took for lunch every day and by washing her dance clothes, babying them along on the gentle cycle and pulling them out of the load before it got thrown into the dryer. And sometimes, I spoke love by forcing myself not to say anything at all.
105 JUNE 2021 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
104 SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2021
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