If we’re waiting for somebody else to change, to start loving or stop hating, we’re placing the power for change-making directly in their hands. Rendering ourselves powerless. Relinquishing our dreams.

Love is our nature. Our genuine human nature. Claim the beauty and power of your own heart. Beginning here. In this moment. Even now.

So many of us have learned a conditional version of love. We’ve made up all sorts of measurements, scorecards, and hierarchies to judge who and what is better or less, worthy of love or not. We’ve grown accustomed to confusing forms of love that are episodic, inconsistent and unreliable. When love is conditional, we denature life. We’re denaturing love.

Humans are the only species I’ve met who struggle to love themselves. We judge our own bodies. We judge other people’s bodies and physical existence. We try hard to be something other than who and what we really are. Our battles against ourselves are reflected in our battles against others. Endless wars among people. Disregard for natural cycles. Disrespect of oceans and rivers, animals and plants, birds and bugs, and so many more.

Elephants are one of the guides who has helped me find my way back home. To Love. Being loving. Being love-able. Able to love.

Elephants are great teachers about body love. They completely embody their massive physical form. Their immense legs and padded feet. Their unique trunks, ears, tusks and tails. Their deep rumbling vibrational language and trumpeting sounds. Their wrinkly skin. Their interconnectedness as a herd.

Elephants fully embody their bodies and their elephant-ness. Every centimeter, shape, form and function is essential. Elephants are simply and beautifully being who they are, living their belonging on the earth, walking their purposes and passions in life.

The Elephant Spirits have shown me that when we, as humans, come back home to ourselves, when we embody our bodies and feel comfortable in our own skin, we’ll reclaim the ability to relate with ourselves and every body else with respect, appreciation, balance, interconnectedness, curiosity and love. Can you imagine?

When we fill our body, mind, emotions, and spirit with love rather than hate, with acceptance rather than warring, we open the doorway to a completely different existence. Our perceptions, choices and language shift. We step into our power of co-creating rather than judging, desecrating and harming. We contribute to the continuance of life, feeling part of rather than separate from, the intricate ecosystems and webs of relationships on our earth. This is the dream I hold for me, for us, for the wildly diverse human us.

Elephant-hearted love begins on the inside and radiates far far beyond. Genuine love is an expansive embrace. Love free-of-conditions doesn’t demand agreement, consensus or sameness. Accepting someone or something unconditionally isn’t about condoning violence or harm.

Love is intelligent and vastly aware. Love acknowledges and respects the existence of whatever it is that exists. Love names without blaming and shaming. Love sees what is just as it is. And chooses how to be in relationship with whatever it is that is seen.

In Love, nobody is excluded. In the eyes of the heart, there is nothing to measure up to, no expectations to be met. Judgments of better or less don’t even make sense in the boundless field of unwavering love. Challenges and changes are understood to be part of the dynamic, interactive flow of life.

Love grieves and honors loss. Love claims and protects sacred space. Love weaves fibers of connection, giving and receiving information, choosing and discerning, nourishing transformations and growth. Love releases what is ready to be let go.

It is a loving act to shed judgments, misunderstandings and lies. Love allows the dying away when cycles are complete, when something is no longer is needed, when the purpose has been served. Love untangles bindings and takes down imprisoning walls.

Follow the medicine of Elephant and set off on a quest to awaken Love. Discover what it feels like to simply love your own body, to appreciate the gifts, to honor and be curious about every centimeter, shape, color, texture, function and form. Embody your existence in your humanness. Settle fully into your unique aliveness. Feel again your love for life. Then stretch your awareness even wider, expanding the reach of your loving embrace.

Love is all around us. Love is ready and waiting to be remembered within us. Living the love we naturally are is a healing, revolutionary choice we can make with every breath and every step we take.