My HEAL acronym—to Hope, Evolve, and Love—ends with Love because love is our greatest gift to ourselves in the healing process. We must heal to get love right. When we heal, love ignites our soul, bringing joy and meaning to our existence.
-Becoming An Empowered Survivor, Elizabeth M. Jones
My healing journey has taken me through an exploration of love. I’ve learned that the MUST heal I wrote about in my book is non-negotiable if we want to show up as our best selves in our relationships. If we don’t heal, we can’t be good parents, children, brothers/sisters, partners, friends, co-workers, leaders, mentors, sponsors, etc.
Why is that? Because we can’t even be good for ourselves, much less anyone else.
When my journey began, I was primarily focused on romantic, intimate love. But God sent me through a series of learnings to teach me that Spiritual love, love from the being we refer to as our God, and self-love are the two most important sources of love we have. Some of my lessons were deeply painful; others were joyous. All along the way, the Universe touched me, blessing me with an understanding of these truths.
My journey to know Spiritual love and, in 2025, my intention to have a deeper, direct connection with my Higher Power has taken me back to worship services. Before this New Year began, I had not been inside a church for many years except for an occasional Easter or Christmas service. My journey has taken me down a path to being open to the concept of spirituality, broadly inclusive, and finding my own way of belief. At the heart of what I believe is love. In fact, I know that I AM Love.
The Purpose of Love
Since the New Year, I’ve been attending church regularly at St Luke’s United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Each service is so alive—alive with the power of God! I feel it when the choir sings and when charismatic Pastor Richie Butler gives his message.
He’s been preaching a series on “Back to the Basics”. One lesson was about The Purpose of Love, which you can find on YouTube. God spoke to me that day, confirming what I know: we must heal to love.
Pastor Butler brought his message from the Bible’s 1 Corinthians 13 (often called the “love chapter”).
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails… 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
– 1 Cor 13: 4 – 13
While I was already captivated by these words, Pastor Butler’s lesson on love's purpose resonated deeply within me. Its parallel and relevance to what I know about the purpose of healing are striking.
According to Pastor Butler, the purpose of love is to 1) keep us in check and 2) empower us.
Love keeps us in check through accountability to ourselves and those who genuinely love us. Ask yourself these questions about your behavior across your meaningful relationships. By meaningful, I’m referring to your relationships with yourself, your family, your tribe or circle of trust, and your coworkers. Allow your being (mind, body, and soul) to feel and answer honestly.
- Are you patient with those who love you? How do you respond when your child asks you to sit down and read a story the moment you walk in the door at home after a long day of work?
- Are you kind to those who love you? How do you respond when your partner invites you to see their favorite band in concert when you’re not partial to the genre of music?
- Do you envy what they have, which you do not have? Are you envious of your best friend when she gets a new car, but you haven’t had a new one in years?
- Do you boast about what you have, which they may not have? Do you boast to your buddies about the material possessions you’ve amassed when even some of what you have is nowhere in sight for them?
- Are you proud in an egotistical or arrogant manner? Do you show off your “good nature and kind heart” by bragging to your coworkers about your “acts of kindness”?
- Do you dishonor others by transgressing against them in any way? When was the last time you told a seemingly unharmful white lie?
- Do you easily anger with those whom you love? When was your last outburst toward your partner or child? What was the cause of your anger? Who was the cause of your anger?
- Do you keep a score of who’s right vs who’s wrong, or who’s done more and who’s done less? Is there a “chore list” in your home that’s really a scorecard?
- Do you delight in evil? Do you engage in activity that takes advantage of or even exploit another human being (e.g., stealing, violence, sex or pornography)? How does that make you feel?
Do you notice that if you answered these questions honestly, love checked your ego? Did you notice that love checked your agenda and your attitude? And did you notice that love checked whether you are selfish or selfless?
If you don’t like your answers, then you might need to examine whether there are traumas and human conditioning that you need to heal from. We are love when we are born, as close to God as a human being can be at any point in time in our lives before we’re exposed to trauma and human conditioning through our trauma response. Our conditioning causes us to live in fear, exuding fear-based emotions in how we react to people and events we interact with. This is because fear-based reactions are all about survival. It’s how we, as humans, have survived since the dawn of our species.
But fear is the opposite of love.
And the only way to elevate our responses to love-based emotions is through healing:
- Hoping that we can heal, no matter how dark the world may appear;
- Evolving with the aid of resources and tools through profound self-discovery to uncover and know who we indeed are before we put on the masks of survivorship; and
- Loving, first ourselves, and then everyone else with whom we have a relationship of any significance, all grounded in Spiritual love.
Grounded in the love of God.
Pastor Butler said that the other purpose of love is to empower. But it’s not about us and our power; instead, it’s about empowering others. Empowering others makes them stronger, more confident, more established, more in control of their life, and able to claim their rights. Power is about allowing others to be who they are while empowering them to become their best selves. Power is not about taking from others in any way, including through selfishness, greed, hoarding, oppression, or disenfranchisement.
Check yourself… Anything other than empowerment is not love.
I’ve added some color to what Pastor Butler said that day. He used words I hold so dear to what I know about healing—hope, love, and empower—which is why his message resonated so much with me as I continue exploring love. The only word in HEAL he did not use directly was “evolve,” yet his message was full of hope for what love can do for humanity if more of us live from a place of evolved consciousness and love-based emotions.
His words were beautiful, but action is what makes them come to life. This is why we need to heal from our past and learn how to heal from our future pain.
1 + 1 = 11: A Metaphor
Jessica Zweig writes about this metaphor in her book, The Light Work. I love this metaphor so much because I believe it is 100% accurate in its depiction of who we should be and can show up as in love when we are healed. This is how we should and can show up in love when we are not suffering under the weight of our trauma and unhealthy survivorship.
Jessica explains her metaphor as:
“The expression of 1 + 1 = 11 is the idea that whole people attract whole people. When they create a union, they do not bend, shift, and reshape to the number 2, which is a number that holds no physical similarity to its original expression. The two 1s remain intact, true to their original forms, standing side by side as the number 11.”
My journey to know love is how I know this metaphor is accurate. I also know that this is how we should show up in love, no matter the nature of the relationship. The key to the success of this metaphor for any relationship, however, is the phrase “whole people.”
As an unhealthy survivor, one of the worst things that I—my wretched abuser—did to myself was to give up just about every part of who I am. I’ve often said that the only part of me that remained when I reached the gateway to my healing journey was the part of me that God would not allow me to give up… the part that saved me. Practically speaking, this manifested in me giving up everyone and everything that could have nourished me and my well-being for someone else I thought loved me.
Now, he did love me, I’m sure, in his way. But he, too, is an unhealed survivor. You see, neither of us was whole when we were together because we were both unhealed. So, I bent for him to survive in our relationship. And he probably bent for me.
As I have healed and taken off the masks that covered up who I AM, I have reclaimed all those pieces of me that I gave up. I’ve straightened up from the “2” that I had become back to the “1” who I am. As I’ve continued to explore and know love, I’ve had many opportunities to learn and practice what it means to be my “1” across various relationships. I’ve learned to show up in love as a daughter. I’ve learned to show up in love as a sister. I’ve learned to show up in love as an aunt. And I’ve learned to show up in love as a friend. But my goal to get intimate or romantic love right is where I have learned the most.
My journey recently led me to write down the traits of the man I am looking for. Each of these has come through experiences that taught me what I do not want in this person. As I would have an unsatisfying experience, the culmination would be to write down the literal opposite of what I had experienced. My series of “no’s” identified my “yeses.”
“Yes, he supports me fully and is happy for me to shine.” This trait came from my many experiences with men who competed with me in vain. The harshest lesson came from my husband, to whom I committed 33 years of my life.
For several years before we divorced, my husband sometimes used the initials “JSKM” after his name, similar to the way I was previously entitled, as a Certified Public Accountant, to use “CPA” after my name (today, my license is inactive). He needed a title, too. The ridiculous thing is that “JSKM” stands for “jet setting kept man” …
You’re correct. That self-imposed designation has a whole lot of problematic stuff packed into it. Related to not supporting me, he behaved like a jet setter, traveling worldwide as he wished, no matter what was happening to me. (Yes, I enabled his behavior because I never said ‘no,’ even after I became the only source of income in our relationship. Please read my blog post about Finding My Voice.)
The last time I allowed him to do that to me was when he left me five weeks after I had the life-altering event (hypnotherapy) that set me at the gateway to my healing journey. That day when he left me in Hong Kong, I was at the lowest point in my life. I haven’t seen him in person since.
Today, I know that I bent to what he wanted. My “1” was so bent by then that I had no response to his lack of support but to acquiesce as I had done for many years. But no more will I tolerate not being supported. And no more will I support a “JSKM!”
“Yes, he sees me and wants to know me fully.” This way of being came from several experiences dating men who rarely asked me questions about me. Well, nothing deeper than “news, weather, and sports” type questions, even into multiple conversations. And how dare I expect that they would want to know my story! Accepting being treated like a woman with no depth would be me bending to a “2”.
“Yes, he doesn’t ask me to give up any part of who I am.” I learned this quality as I healed my relationship with my ex-husband and realized how much of myself I had given up, as I mentioned above. But fine-tuning what this really means for me now in the context of the man I am looking for is a matter of the subtle difference between acceptance vs. choice.
For much of my married life, we lived on 20+ acres at any given time, with many animals—domestic and livestock—that we cared for. That life was demanding and contributed to my giving up so much of myself. I moved to Hong Kong toward the end of our marriage, and now I know that I was in flight mode, running away from that life. After our divorce, I vowed never to return to it.
Alas, living in Texas now, I drive out into the country occasionally, for example, when I see my parents in East Texas. As I drive through the countryside, the beauty of the land, which I have always marveled at, captivates me. Sometimes, I take notice of a beautiful homestead and think to myself how much I would love to live in a place like that. There’s a fleeting moment of longing. Then I get slapped upside the head by one of my angels, who quickly reminds me how much work it is to have a place like that. And the idea fades…
About a year ago, I briefly dated a man who lived in one of those small places out in East Texas. I’m not in a period of my life when I’m dating for fun. Instead, I am on a mission to find my life partner. From the beginning, I evaluate any man I spend time with, considering whether he could be the one. So, getting to know this guy meant spending time at his homestead.
Although I felt like his place, with all the livestock and buildings to come, reminiscent of what I had vowed never to live in again, was something that I could accept in my life, I realized after we parted that his way of living wasn’t what I would choose. I am highly adaptable and could have made it work, especially for love, but I would have been doing just that. Making it work, accepting what someone else has rather than choosing what I want. And thus, I would be bending away from my “1” toward a “2”.
Before living and growing through these experiences, I was not healed enough to know my “1.” I was unable to show up in love as a whole person. Eventually, the relationship ended. But I learned the valuable lesson that God sought to teach me about holding tight to my “1,” whom I discovered through healing. Today, I am my “1”.
On this day when we celebrate love, I wish that YOU show up in love across all of your significant relationships, that you understand, experience, and live the purpose of love and that you stand as “1” in all your “11,” or 1-1, relationships.
Happy Valentine's Day!