Choosing Love

I have come to believe that we choose to fall in love.

Not in one grand, cinematic moment, but in a series of quiet, deliberate "yeses".

We choose it when we accept an invitation to a date, and then another. When we stay a little longer in conversation. When we share parts of ourselves that invite curiosity, or reveal a gentle kind of compatibility. We choose it every time we step closer into another person’s world, and every time we open up our world.

Love, in this sense, is not something that happens to us. It is something we participate in.

And yet, while we choose to love, we do not control what unfolds post choice.

For a long time, I thought love required caution. That it was something to approach carefully, as though it carried inherent risk. But I have since learned that going into anything thinking it is risky is no way to live. So I no longer frame love as danger. Instead, I understand vulnerability as courage. The courage to show and share your truth, negating the fear of reprimand, judgement, or detachment. To love is to reveal yourself without shrinking. To be seen without negotiating your essence.

Maturity changes the way we love.

Not by making us more guarded, but by making us more rooted.

I now understand the importance of loving and respecting myself. I know, that I will never make myself fit into another’s expectations and I will never ask that of anyone else. There is a quiet peace in that. It means that when there is a connection, it is genuine. It brings joy.

And when there is no connection, there is no need for adjustment or performance.

Walking away is not a failure, it is alignment. There is a softness in knowing that love does not require self-abandonment. To love well is also to nourish love intentionally. Not through grand gestures, but through presence.

My love languages are quality time and physical touch. To be loved well is to have these honoured intentionally, consistently; to be met in the ways that make me feel seen and held. But love is not one-sided. It is equally important that I choose to honour my partner’s love languages too. This is how we water the relationship. Not just the romance, but the friendship; the companionship. The growing attraction that merges galaxies over time.

And when love is healthy, when it is intentional, mutual, and grounded in self-respect, it does not feel overwhelming. It feels like a sensory afterglow with flashes of frisson.

A delicate but constant remembering.

A thought. A smile. A touch. Returning to you softly, often, throughout the day. It is not loud, but it is ever present. Not consuming, but expansive.

If I could speak to young Bela I would not warn her against love. I would guide her toward herself. I would tell her that the journey towards relentless self-love is long and, at times, arduous, but it is also the most magical thing she will ever obtain. Because this love becomes the source from which all other love flows. All of it is nourished by the way she loves herself.

I would remind her of this:

Love is not constricting.

It is expansive.

It is abundant.

And, above all, it needs to be, it yearns to be, intentional.

And now, I find myself here: not at the beginning, and not quite in the middle, but in a moment that feels like the Big Bang.

I am falling in love.

Not by accident, not by chance, but by choice.

I do not have control over how it will unfold or how this love will be received but I am choosing not to shy away, not to measure risk, not to retreat into caution disguised as wisdom.

I choose to stay open.

I choose to snuggle into his embrace.

I choose him.

I found Bela in a song

Yesterday I came across a song I hadn’t heard in over ten years - Brighter Than Sunshine by Aqualung.

As the melody filled the room, it carried me back to a woman I had almost forgotten. Not just a memory, but a version of myself that once existed so naturally that I never imagined she could disappear.

She was soft.

She was enamored with life.

And she believed deeply in the dream of true love.

For a moment, I was reunited with her.

And I realized something important: she had never truly died.

The Years I Learned to Harden

Returning to Angola changed me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.

In many ways, I felt I had to fit into a world that did not have much room for the softness I carried. Slowly, subtly, certain aspects of my personality began to fade. Certain passions quieted. Even the lens through which I saw the world shifted.

Somewhere along the way, it was impressed upon me that being soft, that seeing goodness in the world, was naïve. Worse still, it was dangerous.

Life reinforced that lesson in ways I could not have imagined.

My mother’s passing was a colossal blow. My marriage was a darkness from the very beginning. And in the middle of it all, I lost myself trying to be everything for everyone but myself.

I became a devoted wife to a husband who wanted me to be someone I was not.

A stepmother fighting to earn the trust of two boys. A mother struggling to building an emotional bond with my my own son.

I managed a household that never quite felt mine.

Inside, I was slowly disappearing.

I became a shell of a person, trying desperately to mold myself into a woman my husband could feel compelled to protect, to honor, to desire, to love. I was depressed. I was suicidal. I was emotionally and geographically cut off from my family and friends.

And yet, even in that darkness, something inside me was still alive - quietly waiting.

The Long Process of Remembering

Finding myself again did not happen in a moment of clarity. It required a decision that was both terrifying and necessary.

I had to walk away.

I had to regain my family and my friends. I had to rethink what I liked, what my dreams were, and who I wanted to become.

Most of all, I had to begin the long and difficult process of remembering.

I stumbled many times along the way. I tried to save a relationship that had already failed far too many times, losing more pieces of myself in the process.

But slowly, painfully, the release began.

Each day I made a simple commitment: to love myself a little more than the day before.

My father, my son, my siblings, my nieces, and my extraordinary circle of friends became anchors in my healing journey. They helped remind me of who I was, even when I had forgotten.

The Softness That Never Left

Today, I notice small signs that something beautiful is returning.

I no longer cringe at demonstrations of love.I feel a deep appreciation for the world around me.I carry myself with more grace, even through my mistakes.

I give myself time to change, to improve, to fail again, and to grow.

There is a quiet peace within me now. A gratitude that fills my mind, my heart, my soul, and permeates my life in a way I don’t think I had ever felt before.

The younger woman I once was was an oblivious romantic - intuitively gentle and kind.

The woman I am today understands life differently.

Life hardened me so I would not crumble under its weight. But it also taught me that softness is not weakness. It is something that must simply be protected.

And when I heard that song again, I realized something that filled me with hope:

The softness in me had not died.

It had simply lain dormant, waiting patiently to be found again.

The Woman I Am Becoming

When I think about the future, I imagine a woman who is loving, nurturing, and brave.

She is self-sustained in every way.She is thriving in life.

She connects people in a chain of love. She cares about our shared dignity and lifts others up.

Her wealth is not only material - it is her health, her peace, and her infinite love for all things.

What I Now Know

If someone reading this feels like they have lost themselves along the way, I want them to know one thing:

Loving yourself is non-negotiable.

Nothing in this world is worth losing yourself over.

But if you do lose yourself - and many of us will at some point - there is always space to remember, to rescue, and to heal the best parts of the person you once were.

Sometimes all it takes is a song to remind you that she is still there.

Waiting.

Musings from the sky

I've looked over so many cloud coverings from so many planes, yet the imensity and beauty of the view continues to inspire gratitute and a sense of insignificance within the vast horizon that engulfs whatever airplane i'm in.

In the first memory i have of flying I was wearing a heavy, green suede poppy dress. Its checkered chest panel made me dizzy everytime I looked down. I must have been 3 or 4 years old with no real appreciation for much but a paper bags and my mother's embrace: always warm, always home.

I remember the agony of trying to find a way to stop my ear drums from imploding in my head. Swallowing spit didn't work, crying blocked my nose and mother, well, she was panicking too over her ill-fated outfit choice: high heels, short skirt, silk shirt with a decorative stain of my vomit. She was no match for motion-sensitive, baby Me.

The flight I'm in - thirty six years on - is blue skies, and stealth, sleek propulsion. I managed to kick most of my bouts of motion sickness back in 1998 on my first solo trip to zimbabwe to visit a friend. Between ginger ales, while taking in a view as enchanting as this, i chose to let motion sickness take the passenger seat on my travels. I chose to focus on clouds, counting babies on board, watching people sleep and overhearing conversations. Sufficed to say that this was before robust onboard entertainment consoles came along.

We will land soon and as the altitude drops revealing johannesburg, this leg of the journey is almost over. I take in the flickering lights, watching as the city of gold transitions from day to night.

We finally land and looking up at the sky, i realise how far I have come, how far I have still to go and how the gift of flight has become a part of my life; it is always warm, always home.