Love Liberates – 4th of July 2021
Love Liberates: Why My Body is My Sweet Land of Liberty
It’s time for a new revolution to unite the feminine and masculine and celebrate the most powerful freedom of all—LOVE.
Love is the ultimate liberator. Love, not war, has the power to free us and unite us. As a Wild Woman reclaiming my freedom to be, love, and express myself, I declare today a love celebration.
I declare, “I love this land!“
—– My body and America; the land i live in.
Kiana Love
Here’s my love freedom story with some Maya Angelou mixed in….
Growing up I celebrated our independence with the image of men fighting the battle, women supporting men by making our flag, George Washington and John Hancock, signing our declaration. My immigrant parents made their way to Toronto, my father from Berlin, and my mother from the Philippines, and immigrated shortly before I was born. I am the first-born American in my family. I’m proud to be an American.
I also grew up feeling the guilt and shame of our enslavement of African-Americans, appropriation of Hawaii, and decimation of the Native American People. I believed that Fighting = Freedom. I believed that you have to fight and held on to my anger not to be controlled. “Don’t tell me what to do!” was underneath all of my actions. To top it off I hated being a girl, which I associated with being weak and controlled. I was imprisoned by my beliefs, judgment, and physical pain. I got migraines, sore throats, stomach aches, excruciating menstrual cramps
When I finally realized I was hurting myself by judging and hating myself, I spent years trying to fix and vanquish the anger, guilt, and shame. It wasn’t until I began to forgive myself and be loving to myself that I found relief from the pain. I began to allow myself to be loved and found freedom.
My body felt more relaxed. I stopped clenching my fists, jaw & scrunching up my forehead, pain subsided. I stopped blaming, fighting & pushing people away.
I celebrate being gentle with myself. I celebrate allowing myself to be just as I am. I celebrate my imperfections and doing things anyway. I celebrate my stretch marks as life tattoos I celebrate trying new things even if I look funny doing it. I celebrate getting things wrong and trying them again. I celebrate allowing my body to rest when it's tired. I celebrate forgiving myself when I don’t get rest and starting my day over again. I celebrate that I can start my day over at any time. I celebrate dancing and jumping around like Tigger because it feels good. I celebrate the vulnerable little girl in me and the angry teenager that both need lots of love. I celebrate surrendering to love and getting married for the first time at 40. I celebrate my 13th-anniversary is coming up this month. I celebrate allowing myself to feel all my feelings and saying YES to life. Here is a poem from Maya Angelou about Love the liberator! “We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.” ― Maya Angelou
And here is a video of her sharing how love liberated her.
May love set you free,
?Kiana