-This Valentine's Day-

"There is no fear in letting tears come.  Sadness is a gift to avoid the nothingness of numbness, and all hard places need water.  Grief is a gift, and after a rain of tears, there is always more of you than before.  Rain always brings growth." Ann Voskamp
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I am a sucker for a holiday, and a self-diagnosed hopeless romantic.  I love all things love .. surprises and cheesy and sappy and sentimental.

So - truth is - my heart hurts today... this Valentine's Day... the first Valentine's Day I've been alone in fifteen years.

I am missing a love, grieving a love I thought I had and a life that is no longer.  Finding my way and learning how it feels to walk through it all searching for strength and courage, yet too often feeling broken and grief-stricken.

But my battered and bruised heart is still full of love today, and I am trying with all my might to focus that love on the three tiny humans who force me to choose joy, to eat the dessert first, to jump on the couches, to sing as loud as we can in the car, to dance in the kitchen, to kiss and to hug and to giggle and to snuggle and to embrace our new, scary, messy, beautiful life... a life in which they will always, always know what love means to me - the truth of my heart, that it beats for them, and that they were the ones who taught me how to fill in the cracks and piece it back together in the most imperfect, courageous way.

"Maybe the love gets in easier right where the heart is broke open -- because wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth..."

Happy, Happy Valentine's Day from me and my three tiny loves. <3 <3 <3