the anatomy of tenderness

love has always been a language i understood before i could speak it. it hums beneath everything—every silence, every glance, every trembling moment between what’s said and what’s meant. i’ve spent my whole life trying to translate it into words, but words always fall short. they can’t quite hold the way love feels when it settles in your chest—how it’s equal parts ache and awe, chaos and calm. love isn’t just something that happens to you; it’s something that remakes you, reshapes every soft corner and sharp edge you thought you knew. it’s the quiet reminder that you are not meant to move through this world untouched.

there’s nothing delicate about love, not really. people romanticize it as gentle, easy, safe—but it’s none of those things. it’s a storm that asks if you’re strong enough to stay standing in the downpour. it’s the shaking of the soul that forces you to confront the parts of yourself you’ve buried under fear. love is the truth that breaks you open and whispers, “you can still begin again.” it’s not kind in the traditional sense; it’s kind in the way a wildfire is kind—it burns what no longer serves you and leaves space for something new to grow.

i’ve learned that love doesn’t always look the way we expect. sometimes it’s a slow, patient unfolding, and other times it’s a collision that leaves you breathless. sometimes it lasts a moment, sometimes a lifetime. and in both, there is meaning. we try so hard to measure love by its endurance, but maybe the truest measure is intensity—the way it changes you, the way it leaves fingerprints on your soul.

to love deeply is to walk willingly into uncertainty, knowing it could undo you. it’s to stand bare and say, “this is all of me—my light, my mess, my trembling.” and hope that someone, or something, meets you there with grace. it’s terrifying, the vulnerability of it. but also the most human thing we can do—to open our hearts to connection, to let someone see the unedited version of who we are, to keep choosing softness in a world that rewards detachment.

love has broken me more times than i can count. not because it was cruel, but because it was real. it has stripped away my illusions, forced me to confront the way i cling, the way i give, the way i ache for understanding. it’s taught me that love isn’t about being rescued—it’s about being revealed. it asks, “who are you when you’re no longer performing comfort?” it demands honesty, even when honesty is the hardest thing to hold. and somehow, through every fracture, it leaves behind more truth than pain.

there is beauty in how love softens us, even after loss. in how the heart continues to expand, even after it’s been broken. maybe that’s the miracle of it—that no matter how many times love has left me trembling, i still believe in it. i still reach for it. i still let it teach me. because the opposite of love isn’t hate—it’s numbness. and i never want to live a life that feels numb.

the anatomy of tenderness is not for the faint of heart. it’s made of small, sacred moments—the quiet forgiveness after misunderstanding, the unspoken understanding in shared silence, the hand that lingers just long enough to say “you’re safe here.” it’s found in the courage to stay soft when the world tells you to harden, to choose empathy when it would be easier to turn away. love, in its truest form, is not about possession—it’s about presence. it’s not about what you take; it’s about what you give freely, knowing it might not return the same way.

and that’s the most exquisite part of all of it—the risk. the willingness to love without guarantee. to keep showing up for life with an open heart, even when it trembles. that is what makes us human, what makes us divine.

so i’ll keep loving this way—wide open, unguarded, endlessly human. i’ll keep writing about it, breathing it, bleeding it into everything i touch. because love, in all its forms—gentle or brutal, fleeting or forever—is the reason i’m still here, still reaching, still believing in something beautiful enough to hurt for.

with ink + bloom, 🌻