Standing in Love

It’s a complex business, this thing we call love. We are born into it, we seek it, we are shaped by it, and sometimes, we are deeply wounded in its name. For so much of my life, I thought of love as something to fall into — a dizzying, intoxicating plunge, a loss of control that felt both terrifying and utterly desirable. The poets and the pop songs all seemed to agree: love was a kind of beautiful, chaotic surrender. You fell, and you hoped someone would be there to catch you.

But what if that’s only half the story? What if the most profound, most transformative love isn’t a fall, but a stand? Not a collapse, but a conscious, deliberate planting of the feet. A way of being, a place we choose to inhabit, moment by moment, breath by breath. This is the work I’ve come to know in my own body, in my own life, and with my dear ones I sit with in my practice. It is the practice of standing in love. This shift in perspective has been the most profound journey of my life, moving from a young woman who felt perpetually at the mercy of life’s emotional currents to a woman who has learned to build her own solid ground.

I remember a time, years ago, when a dear friendship was in turmoil. There had been a misunderstanding, a painful one, and my nervous system was screaming. My heart hammered in my chest, my stomach was a knot of acid, and my thoughts raced in a tight, defensive loop. Every cell in my body was preparing for battle, or for flight. This is the body’s ancient wisdom, of course — the primal, necessary response to a perceived threat. The amygdala, that little almond-shaped cluster of neurons in the brain’s temporal lobe, had sounded the alarm, flooding my system with cortisol and adrenaline. It was a classic fear response, and it felt utterly consuming. My whole history seemed to be coiled in that knot in my stomach — every time I had felt misunderstood, dismissed, or abandoned. My mind, in its frantic effort to protect me, was serving up a highlight reel of past hurts, convincing me that this situation was just like all the others, and that the only way to be safe was to build a wall, fast.

In the past, I would have been swept away by it. I would have reacted from that place of fear — with anger, with withdrawal, with a desperate need to be right. I would have, in essence, fallen out of love. With my friend, and more importantly, with myself. But on this day, something different happened. I had been deep in my studies of the Tao te Ching and practicing cranial sacral work, both of which teach a kind of profound listening. A listening beneath the noise.

So I sat. I didn't try to fix the feeling, or suppress it, or even understand it right away. I just… sat with the storm inside me. I placed a hand on my heart, a hand on my belly, and I breathed into the tight, knotted places. I acknowledged the fear. I see you. I feel you. You are trying to protect me. And then, very gently, I asked a question, not of my racing mind, but of the deeper wisdom in my body: What would it be like to stand in love, right here?

The Body's Language of Love

The body doesn't lie. It is the most honest and immediate barometer of our inner state. When we are in a state of fear, the body contracts. The muscles tighten, the breath becomes shallow, the energy pulls inward and upward, away from the earth. It’s a biological imperative for survival. But when we are in a state of love — and I’m not speaking of romance, but of a fundamental frequency of safety, connection, and compassion — the body responds in a completely different way. It expands.

Think of the last time you felt a genuine moment of connection. Perhaps it was with a child, or a beloved pet, or in a moment of quiet awe in nature. What happened in your body? Your shoulders likely dropped. Your breath deepened, settling into your belly. You might have felt a warmth spreading through your chest. This is the physiology of love. It is the domain of the vagus nerve, the great wandering nerve that connects the brain to the heart, the lungs, and the gut. When the vagus nerve is toned and healthy, it signals to our nervous system that we are safe. It activates what my colleague Stephen Porges calls the ‘social engagement system,’ our neurobiological foundation for connection. This system allows for the subtle, beautiful dance of human interaction: the ability to read facial cues, to hear the nuance in someone’s tone of voice, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable. It is the biological underpinning of a heart that is open, not guarded. It’s the difference between seeing the world through a pinhole of threat and seeing it through a wide-angle lens of possibility. It is the biological underpinning of a heart that is open, not guarded.

Standing in love is the practice of consciously choosing to cultivate this state, even — and especially — when our old programming is screaming at us to do the opposite. It’s not about pretending the fear isn’t there. It’s about holding the fear with a loving presence, and choosing to anchor into a different possibility. It is the work of building new neural pathways. The brain, with its incredible neuroplasticity, can be rewired. The well-worn grooves of reaction — the fight, flight, or freeze responses that may have been wired in childhood — do not have to be our destiny. With practice, we can carve new channels. We can create a new default response that is rooted not in contraction, but in expansion. Not in fear, but in love. The social engagement system Porges describes, the one that lets us read a face and risk being vulnerable, is worth knowing intimately, and this plain-language tour of polyvagal theory explains it without the jargon.

A Conscious Choice, A Daily Practice

This is not a one-time decision. It is a moment-to-moment choice. It is a practice, like meditating or stretching a muscle. It is the choice to meet the sharpness of judgment — from others, or from ourselves — with the softness of compassion. It is the choice to listen to another’s reality without needing to make them wrong. It is the choice to feel the discomfort of a difficult conversation while staying grounded in our own feet, connected to our own breath.

For me, with my friend, standing in love meant not making the phone call from a place of reactivity. It meant waiting. It meant breathing, and walking, and allowing the initial, fiery intensity of the fear to move through me without taking the driver's seat. It meant when I finally did reach out, I could do so from a place of genuine curiosity and a desire for connection, not a need to win or be validated. I could say, “That was painful for me, and I want to understand what was happening for you.” I could listen from a place of an open heart. It didn't mean I agreed with her perspective, but it meant I could hold it alongside my own, in a shared space of respect. The friendship, which could have shattered, instead deepened. We had met each other in a place of profound honesty, not by falling into old patterns, but by choosing to stand, together, in a new one.

This is the great teaching of the Tao, which reminds us that the softest things in the world overcome the hardest things. Water, which yields, can wear away rock. Love, which can feel so vulnerable, is in fact the most resilient force in the universe. The 67th chapter of the Tao Te Ching speaks of three treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility. It says, “From compassion comes courage.” It’s not the absence of fear that makes us brave, but the presence of love. Love as a force, a frequency, a place to stand. It’s not the absence of fear that makes us brave, but the presence of love. Love as a force, a frequency, a place to stand. It is the ground beneath our feet when the world feels like it is shaking. It is the quiet, unwavering presence that allows us to hold the complexities of being human — the joy and the sorrow, the connection and the conflict — with grace and with courage.

It is a practice of coming home to ourselves, again and again. It is the quiet revolution of choosing not to fall, but to stand. To stand in the full, radiant, and unwavering power of a heart that is open, a body that is present, and a spirit that knows itself as love.

What would it be like, just for today, to notice the moments of contraction in your own body? To meet them not with judgment, but with a gentle hand and a curious breath? What would it be like to ask, in those moments, What would it feel like to stand in love, right here? You might be surprised by the answer that arises from the quiet wisdom within.

With infinite love and support on your journey, Susan