"Do you feel loved enough?"

In a society where women are too short, too tall, too fat and too small, do you feel loved enough? When complimented, do you shy away allowing the hurt inside of you to speak louder than the strength inside of you? Today of all days- is the love you feel enough to suffice? Good marriage, bad day. Happy wife, crazy life- how do you feel? I want to be able to look in the mirror each day, full of love for myself. I want to see my face staring back at me and say "Good morning beautiful. You are loved." I want it to radiate off of me like a scent or perfume. I want people to walk by me and think to themselves, "Damn, that woman is loved." Not because of tattoos or symbols that dangle from chains but because I KNOW it to be true and I carry myself as one who is loved. I want my daughter to look at me and know that she is loved in the purest and most abundant way possible because she is being loved by one who is loved.

It is so easy to be caught up in the words and in the expressions. The vernacular of love is repetitive and seamless. Enough to melt you on its first utterance and crush you on its last goodbye. So how do we then identify whether we are loved enough. How do I know without words that today, I am loved beyond measure? That the amount of love I receive or feel is enough? Do I know it with a gesture? Is an opened door or a proffered flower enough to know that today, this amount of love fills my cup? Is it with sex? Is the fact that he fucked me with the lights on enough to know that I am loved abundantly? How do I identify love when I can't even identify how I define love?

New Years is about making false promises and guiding hopes for a new year. It's about taking every hurt and every lesson learned in a previous year and make the new year that much better. This year- I make no false promises. I will not promise to be a better person. I will not promise to lose weight, work out more or even to make more money. This year, I challenge myself. This year I will define love. I will know what it means to be loved enough. Not because it's a new year. Not because a calendar turned a page but because today is the best day to start. So I ask you- Do you feel loved enough today?