Dear Friends,

I was so happy to see my mom Saturday.

As a little girl, I was especially close to my mom. She reminded me the other day that while growing up I was her little buddy, the one who prayed with her, for hours, the one who went to church with her every Wednesday night.

As a woman who now qualifies for a senior discount, I’ve added independent thinking to my strong sense of loyalty and conviction. I’m more spiritual than religious. I trust my heart.

My mom and I have expressed our differences. It would have been more comfortable to bag them, to leave my truth unspoken, and to grow distance, rather than real knowing and intimacy. We’ve endured some backing away and some chaos.

But I want to sing (however poorly) that it’s so worth the effort to be honest, to be real. I have never loved my mom as well as I love her now. I do it unconditionally without judgment, truly knowing her, not through the eyes of a child, but through the wide-open eyes of a woman who has lived 61 years.

I remember, as a dutiful little girl, massaging my mom’s back. She would gratefully reward me with a quarter.… More

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We know we have deviated from love when: We doubt. We get impatient. We judge. We get scared. We make excuses. We get provoked. We feel proud. Or we try to be right.

But when we deviate, we don’t have to judge ourselves, or get impatient, or provoked, or scared. We don’t have to make excuses for our behavior, or try to be right. We don’t have to doubt our worth. And we don’t have to be too proud to admit that we have deviated.

We can simply return to love. … More