16 Comments
Dec 9, 2021Liked by Ijeoma Oluo

I have such joy for your joy with your Gabriel! Deep and true and beautiful. Love, Aunty

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Wow, I just love your love. Just love it. Congratulations, you deserve it so, so much.

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This is such a beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing it. Your words ring true with me. Happy Anniversary! I found my true love at age 43. We married when I was 44 and he was 46. We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage in early February. He is my knight in shining armor in so many ways.

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Dang! This reflected back to me words I’ve never had to describe my current relationship ship, and stew in appreciation for it. Thank you, and congratulations on three years!

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Immediately, the song “Sunday Love” by Etta James popped in my head. This love seems like smooth movements and afternoon gloaming. Beautiful.

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“I once thought that love was a thing that was so intense that it tore you apart.” I thought this exact same thing until this year. That “in love” was a kind of madness that made you vibrate to the point of disintegrating. That it was unsustainable and exhausting.

Your description of the love you found now gives me hope that it exists for me too. That calm kind of love where you feel like you could travel with someone and just be. For me this doesn’t include sex or the marketed idea of romance, or even living together necessarily. But the feeling is the same. That calm kind of love where just being around someone makes you feel like you can exist more fully in your body and in this world.

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This made me tear up. Thank you for this beautiful meditation on love.

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Beautiful 💕

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I must have missed this one somehow! Only catching it now because of your substack anniversary post. "Because I’m in a love that has made me more myself every single day" -- that is IT. I was lucky to find my spouse early in life. And he doesn't complete me, he just makes me more me.

"This love is such a quiet thing." is also IT. I actually quoted a song of the same name (Kander and Ebb, orginially song in a show by Liza Minnelli! at my friend's elopement I co-officiated.) The lyrics are under the song link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZLqAfaDHjo

It's funny but the bells don't ring

It's a quiet thing

When you hold the world

In your trembling hand

You'd think you'd hear a choir sing

It's a quiet thing

There are no exploding fireworks

Where's the roaring of the crowds

Maybe it's the strange new atmosphere

Way up here among the clouds

But I don't hear the drums

And I don't hear the band

The sounds I'm told

Such moments bring

Happiness comes in on tip-toe

Well what'd'ya know

It's a quiet thing

A very - quiet - thing

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❤️this, ❤️what you uncover and shines light on beauty, soul, what makes authentic life living

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Two sweet Spirits brought together in Love; Empathy.

🤓💙

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All I can say is wow... so happy that you found this kind of love and shared that it exists.

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This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I hope to feel like this one day.

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A joyful 💗

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How beautiful your story is, and how beautifully you tell it. Thank you for sharing, and happy anniversary.

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This is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Happy Anniversary!

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