Love has no labels

Love has no labels
I saw a short movie “love has no label” it was posted on social media and it showed different kinds of lovers behind a screen showing only their skeleton. Then after a few seconds the complete couples were revealed: different genders, different colours, different ages… all different kind of relations.
This short movie touched me. It was shown how, on the inside, we are all quite the same. And this is exactly what I am realizing more and more getting to know all kind of ‘very different’ people coming from very different cultures and very different situations. People want to belong to groups to feel safe, accepted and loved. We dress, move, act and even think in more or less degree the way the group teaches us, just to fit in. The more we fit the box, the more we feel accepted. We have so many boxes: gender, religion, country, political party, social class etc.  In my work as an Art Therapist (working with psychosocial issues) I see all these very different people struggling with all these very different boxed all the time. Sometimes it is super hard or even impossible to keep up with the box. I remember very well how terrified and insecure I felt when I, as a young woman, fell in love with another woman. I was not raised  being a lesbian, I actually knew nobody in my surrounding being gay or lesbian and my brothers and I even used to make jokes about ‘them’.  But suddenly I could no longer pretend I was not a lesbian myself. I was very afraid to be judged by the people I loved most. And in the first place they did judge me, they thought I was confused, my dad even asked me if I were on drugs or anything like that. The funny thing was: I step out of my safe box and I very realised that I was still exactly same person on the inside. This is one of the examples that thought me to look more and more behind the veil.
A bit more than a year ago I subscribed my family in a program called ‘Gast Aan Tafel’. Gast aan Tafel is a very beautiful program that connects refugees with Dutch families for dinner dates. I suddenly became afraid again to be judged as a lesbian. I was afraid that our Syrian guest would be a Muslim unable to accept us. But there was my old mistake, my fear speaking; our guest did not judge us at all!! I found out that Shahira in a way felt the same. She does not like to fit in boxes and she feels terrible to be judged as if she fits one. Shahira actually is my great example in really seeing people as they are and she herself is one of the most authentic persons I know: Shahira is ONLY Shahira. I once more learnt to drop those limiting beliefs.
Yesterday when preparing to write I saw an interview about love with Sadguru (one of the inspiring teachers I like to follow on Youtube). He explained it so very clearly: looking at the differences makes us judgemental. Judging excludes and excluding makes us fearful, fear on his turn feeds anger. Anger and fear are really terrible things to feel. But the more I got to know Shahira, the more I learnt to see how much the same we are despite of our complete opposite backgrounds. And since I feel very safe with her it is very easy to learn with and from her there where we see things from a different point of view. Shahira and I became very close friends or we feel more like family actually. By loving Shahira my eyes and heart were opened for much more people. Like my oldest daughter always says: we are really all one big family. So I started to love more and more and like I understood from my own experience, Sadguru and many other great teachers: it is not to be loved, but to feel love that is the greatest feeling we can have. And great things make us crave for more…loving to love makes us find ways to love more and more. But ofcourse like everything: including and loving a lot has its risks.
With the grown heart and my opened eyes came the feeling of responsibility for those I love. In the beginning I almost broke under this weight. The world trouble became mine. I felt frustrated and helpless I had to learn very quickly how to deal with the pain witch in a way was second hand but suddenly felt so close. When I shared my negative feelings of uselessness toward the situation with my very dear friend (who himself has been through a lot) he said: “Please Julia, I want to share positive energy with you, not negative”. This was very confronting to me: I knew he was right. Maybe without realising it, he hereby gave me one of my most important life lessons: “I have to shine in order to give light and to be there with and for my friends”. We are in a way all responsible, we have influence on what is happening but we can only give what we can handle. We are responsible to take care about ourselves to be and stay able to take care of others and to inspire in this way. So this is my path now, this is how I came to work with “She Matters” a group of great people who I love to work with for the good of all. Love has no labels and understanding this means more than I realised: She really Matters more than a lot to me!