Weekly Photo Challenge: Love
“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
My first great-grandchild is just one of the many forms of love that fill my life. — Photo by Baron Marsh
I hungered
I grew up feeling unloved, not that I actually was, I now realize. It was just that my father was never around, and my mother was overburdened with taking care of my three younger brothers and her own mother while fretting over finances because her husband gambled away his pay checks.
I married young because I thought I had found the first person who ever loved me — and I was convinced no one else ever would. The love proved false, but I hung on far too many years because I still thought no one else would ever love me. I left when even that alternative was better than what I had.
What happened after that is that I did find love. While not exactly the ever-lasting romantic love I had longed for, I discovered love had many forms. Family, friends, colleagues and love for my job and my life was love.
I consider my passion for writing, for birds, for life a fulfilling kind of love. Seeing my grandchildren grow up and have children of their own is love. The neighbor, like the one I have now who is keeping watch over me while I recuperate from a broken ankle, is an expression of love.
Love fills my world. I’m so glad I finally recognized it.
Bean’s Pat: An Elephant Can’t http://anelephantcant.me/ This one’s for those who lived through the ‘60s. This is a fun blog I recently came across. Go back a bit and look for the cats.
“Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 
“Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.” Alan Cohen
Pat Bean's blog 