Don’t Lose Your Tender Heart
A reflection on imperfect relationships, sacred endings, and the holy work of being with one another
It's been forty years since I raced to the mirror eagerly expecting to look older. Five seemed like such a seminal number next to four. Surely I would now be wise, mature, weathered. My face fell when to my surprise I didn't look anything more than the day before. I ran to my parent’s bedroom and flung myself next to my mother on the bed. Heartbroken. Crestfallen.
She held me for a moment, then went to the closet and came back holding a stuffed animal—a Care Bear. Tender Heart. She had sewn it herself.
She cupped my chin in her hand and said, “You are tender-hearted. Don’t ever lose it. Your heart is good. Be kind to it.”
I didn’t fully understand what she meant. I was a newly minted five after all. I thought hearts were for pumping blood, or drawing with pink crayon. But something in the way she said it made me stop, frozen in place. I held the Care Bear close and traced the seams where her stitches gathered, uneven, soft. It smelled faintly like her perfume and the mothballs in her closet. I remember thinking maybe “tender-hearted” meant something breakable, like a Christmas ornament. Or maybe it meant something rare. Like the way she touched my face when I cried.
I didn’t have the words for it then. But I think part of me knew it was a kind of magic, that naming. Like she had spoken a spell over me. And it stayed.
Even when I forgot.
Even when I lost it—when I hardened, broke, numbed, pulled away, her love was still there. Waiting for me to remember.
Even near the end, her voice was faint, but her message was clear: “Don’t lose your tender heart.”
On the ships we sail life in
I've been thinking quite a-bit about friendship and lovership and relationship and all the various ships we sail through the seas of life with.
Some of them are built for speed, thrilling and reckless, tearing across the surface before burning out. Others drift quietly, slow and steady, more life raft than anything—keeping us afloat even if we don’t know we’re sinking. Some sink without warning. Some never leave the harbor.
But the ones that last, that hold us and shape us and remake us are rarely the most refined or glittery or adorned. They’re the ones that weather the storms. The ones that creak in the wind, take on water, get patched up a hundred times. The ones that make it back to safety again and again, even if it takes many years.
How Relationships Change & Change Us
My parents were married 55 years. It was not a perfect marriage, both of them had reminded me. They squabbled, of course. My dad had champagne taste on a beer budget, and my mom was the one counting the pennies. I remember one especially long fight over a move across the city—he wanted more light, she wanted more stability. He bought a red Ford Thunderbird off the lot once without asking her. Just drove it home—his smile as bright as that car. She didn’t speak to him for two days. He washed it twice in that time, then handed her the keys. It became hers. They’d laugh about it as the years went on.
In all of it, there was something unspoken between them. An agreement beneath the arguments. They weren’t fighting to win, they were fighting because they were both still in it. They were not perfect parents or perfect partners. Who is? And yet somehow, at the end, whatever sharp and angular truths once cut between them eroded to something soft. The shape of her body melted into his. Two, at last, after all of these long years, finally became one flesh.
I've often wondered since my father died and my mother was left alone, about how we measure love. What can be said of a good relationship? What does it mean to have “made it work?”
Isn’t it a marriage of sleepless nights and difficult conversations and balancing budgets and tender—achingly tender—moments and making love and breaking it and making it again?
Relationships are ever evolving and changing. They're always being worked through. They're a dialogue not a series of ultimatums. Getting what you want is rarely the point. The process by which you get there is actually the stuff of relating. Mature relationships are about give and take. Healthy connections are a never ending dance, back and forth.
Relationships are more about the HOW than the WHAT.
And I suppose, standing now on this side of both my parents’ deaths, that the truth—when all is said and done—is this: it’s not a failure when love ends, or when relationships once lit by passion quietly evolve into something else. No, instead it is the sign that they once were alive. Every relationship ends. One way or the other. The measure of loving is not if something is everlasting or infinite, but how we relate, NOW.
I saw this kind of love near the end, when my father’s body began to fail him. My mother became his shadow—lifting, soothing, tending. She sent out urgent messages to my siblings and me, asking us to come, to cheer him on, to remind him who he was. Her words were full of that stubborn, maternal faith: He just needs encouragement. He’s still in there. Please don’t give up on him, or let him give up on himself.
She never stopped holding him, even as he slipped further away. Even after the life left his lungs. She cooed into his ear like a lullaby, as if she could will him to stay with the power of her voice. “Please. Please. Please. Please, don’t go.” As if love, spoken aloud, could reverse death.
And maybe it didn’t. It softened it. Made it beautiful, even. The way she stayed. The way she loved him all the way through.
Maybe love doesn’t bring us back, but it brings us through. Through the ending. Through the ache. Through the long silence that follows.
The Kind of Love That Matters
A life is also calculated by the same measurements. How we show care. How we speak to one another. How we take responsibility. How we forgive. How we make Love. How we share our heart openly and with utter vulnerability. How we form a desire and advocate for it. How we give to those we are in connection to. How we open our hearts to Love. And yes, even how we let go.
I’ve become certified obsessed with those kinds of people; the ones who know connection is not convenience. Who understand that seasons change, people grow, life pulls. But still they find their way back. They choose. They stay in the boat. They're nearby in a storm. They’re those who remind you to be kind to your own heart.
What a task. What a beautiful task.
It is learning to no longer make demands upon our heart, a continuous string of withdrawals without renewal. It is the practice of rest. Of taking midday naps or unexpected breaks in the day to meet a friend. It is allowing oneself to collapse in a fit of tears.
It’s a protectiveness that invites in only those who also practice this gentleness, who display constancy instead of capriciousness; choosing stability of soul over yet another siren song.
It is allowing others to see our tender places only when they do not disregulate our nervous systems, only when they can show that they are also tender and trustworthy. It is also making space for warmth and care, when it is given skillfully and can be trusted. And yes, it is closing doors on places of suffering and not staying open unnaturally.
I hope you find people who reminds you that love is how we show up, not how long it lasts. That letting go is a form of devotion--even endings are holy. That being real matters more than being right. That forgiveness is stronger than the fires of bitterness. That creativity heals in a way which cruelty cannot. People who remind you that magic is worth believing in, in spite of all the hurt that the world can throw your way.
And that you are not difficult to love.
Because what else are we doing here, if not learning how to truly be with each other? Imperfectly. Through trials, toils, and snares. In the seasons and the seas of living. To truly sail through this life. Together.
That bear which my mother gave me is now old. His stuffing is mostly gone. He’s stretched thin. But emblazoned in the center of his chest, still Bright, still good, is his heart. And I, am learning, how to be kind to it.
Maybe today, you could call someone. In kindness. In love. Or write something that needs to be said. With care. With forgiveness. Or simply sit beside someone you love, no words at all. Whatever it is, let it be heartful.
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