When I was 17 I was head over heels in love.
All the adults around me told me that I was not old enough or mature enough to feel love.
I thought I was the one young person who knew better.
Neither of us were right.
I was in love, there is no doubt.
What we sometimes fail to admit is that love is not a quantifiable thing. Nor can it be contained.
Why have so many writers and poets struggled to describe it? Because no one can.
It grows and changes and evolves in each of us.
When I was 17 I knew how to feel love, but I did not have the maturity and capacity to understand it and manage it.
I am 40 now.
I have more capacity for love than I had at 17. I have more capacity for love than I had at 30.
There is not some magic age at which we finally understand love.
As we grow and learn, our capacity to love increases.
To my children:
Love.
Love with all you have.
Let that love go when it does not align with your life goals.
Feel the pain and grow from it.
Then love again.
Let that love grow, and know that what you feel now will grow into something larger.