Your Collective - Mind, Body & Spiritual Balance

The Journey to Loving Freely and Wholeheartedly

• Sherisse Alexander • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Have you ever found yourself pondering the true essence of unconditional love? Join me, Sherisse Alexander, as I peel back the layers of this profound emotion in a heartfelt podcast discussion. With an open heart, I delve into my own experiences as a parent and the effortless love I share with my children, comparing it to the more complicated love shared between adults. This episode is an invitation to reflect on the role of compassion, empathy, and judgment as we strive to embody unconditional love in our lives. Drawing inspiration from Neil Donald Walsh's "Friendship with God," I explore the parallels between our personal journeys and the deeper understanding of love that connects us all.

In today’s conversation, we'll traverse the terrain of affection that knows no bounds—especially the kind we feel for our children and furry companions. There's a genuine moment from my journal where the lightbulb went on, discovering the simplicity in loving without conditions and the stark contrast to the 'shoulds' we often impose on adult relationships. As we move forward, I'll share how I aim to infuse my future interactions with this pure form of love, and I encourage you to consider how it can transform your own connections. So, let's come together, remove the expectations, and learn to love more freely in this latest dive into the world of unconditional affection.

Sherisse Alexander:

Good afternoon, good evening or good night, wherever you may be when you are listening to this. My name is Sherisse Alexander and I am your host of your Collective. In today's episode, we'll be chatting a little bit about, or exploring the idea of unconditional love. What is it? Do you experience it in your life, what does that actually feel like and what does it mean? Thank you for joining me today on your collective and let's dive in.

Sherisse Alexander:

I didn't expect to actually do this today, but I was journaling and I felt called to record this, so I just said you know what, just get up and do it, just go record it and don't script it, just go with it. And so what I want to open with on this premiere podcast is about unconditional love, and it was a question that I've been pondering, I would say, for the better part of my adult life. What is it? You know it's this elusive thing. And just a little bit of background about myself. You know I'm a mom to four amazing human beings. I say to them as often as I possibly can, if not every single day I am so grateful that they chose me to be their mother in this life, and I only hope that I have brought as much value to them as they have brought to me in my life. They have taught me so much about myself and the type of parent, adult woman that I want to be. They are the very, very best parts of me, and their father, and really they are my mentors. They are my mentors, but anyways, I remember once, a few years ago, sitting around the dinner table and one of them had asked me, well, what is unconditional love? And I took a moment and I thought about it, I felt it and then I said to them I said you know, guys, the truth is is that I think the only time I have ever seen for me anyways true exhibit, knowingness of what unconditional love is, what I feel for you and for those of you who have parent or who have children and are parents, I think you can understand what I mean when I say that, and it's just not even unique to being parents.

Sherisse Alexander:

I'm going to put animals in that same category. You just love them with your whole heart. You have absolutely no expectation of what they will do, what they will say. That doesn't mean that we don't have boundaries and that doesn't mean that we let them do whatever they want, but to a certain degree it actually does mean that I can think of so many experiences over the years as a parent where I didn't clip their wings, I didn't instill fear in them, I didn't tell them that they couldn't do something or they shouldn't do something. I'd help them to think about if they responded to something in a certain way and potentially what the outcomes might be and what that might feel like for that other person that might be on the receiving end. And so my point in that is is that as I was journaling this morning with this question in my mind, I realized that you know, for many, many, many of my adult relationships, there's always this hint of expectation and confinement you should do this and you should do that, and you must treat me this way, and so on and so forth. And allow me to be exceedingly clear we're not talking about allowing people to abuse us. What we're talking about is having healthy boundaries and just choosing something else for yourself.

Sherisse Alexander:

And right now I'm listening to this book, and it's called Friendship with God by Neil Donald Walsh, and I literally stumbled across this book. I had decided that I needed to revisit some ideas around my faith and my beliefs, and so I decided I was going to re-listen to the entire Conversations with God series. And so, as luck would have it, god series. And so, as luck would have it, or God, I see this new book and it's probably been around for a while, but it's new in my experience. So I'm like huh, what's that? And I start listening to it. And I won't ruin it for you, because I'm sure that I'll reference it a whole heck of a lot during these conversations in this discourse.

Sherisse Alexander:

But where I'm at in this book it just talks about exactly that what unconditional love is. And it is genuinely, truly the understanding that you know. I don't have any expectations of what this person should do, and the truth of the matter is is I don't know what that person's soul's journey is. I don't know what experience they are desirous of having. I don't know what it is like. Yes, we might know on a conscious level, but do we know on a soul level? And you know, kudos to those of you out there who you know have the whole mind, body, spirit thing fully, 100% connected. And what I'm talking about here is subconscious, conscious, super conscious and super conscious connection. That kudos to you if you're in that space and place. For me, it's still a journey, so I'm still trying to figure out how to connect all those pieces together. Connect all those pieces together.

Sherisse Alexander:

But getting back to my point about what unconditional love is meant to be, it is, you know, picture that person, that animal where you just love them, period. Doesn't matter what they do, even if they hurt you, you can still love them through that, and it's my genuine belief that that's really what the whole experience is in large degree about. How do we love our fellow man even when they hurt us? How do we do that? How do we step out of our pain and our hurt and the stories that we tell ourselves and move into a place and space of compassion, empathy and, most importantly, non-judgment?

Sherisse Alexander:

I have this girlfriend of mine and she always says to me and this is one thing that I'm real solid on she's been saying to me for years oh, you walk through life with your rosy colored glasses on. And I say to her I refuse to walk through life with anything aside from optimism. I refuse to believe in the dark side of humanity. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Of course it exists. I'm very much cognizant of that. But what I mean is, is that I choose to see and acknowledge the light that exists in every single one of us.

Sherisse Alexander:

And, interestingly enough, these are conversations that I've recently had with my kids and it's like they're testing me. They're like, well, what about the serial killer? What about the rapist? What about the terrorist? And I said you know what? As soon as we can stop and acknowledge that all of us are operating out of a place and space of pain that has been unhealed, unaddressed, unacknowledged and unhealed, then we can genuinely move into the place and space of compassion, love and empathy, because we are there ourselves. If you're feeling something, acknowledge it. If you're angry, why are you angry? It's an unhealed part of yourself. So, even those souls that are rolling through this life, or who have rolled through this life making choices that are outside of the alignment of high vibes, it genuinely is just coming from a place of hurt.

Sherisse Alexander:

I was saying this using this example, actually two days ago with my kids, where we were talking about. You know, when we talk about not knowing the journey that an individual soul is on and what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to experience or what they're desirous of, let's not use the word as confining, as supposed to, but what that individual soul or individual is desirous of experiencing. Who are we as individuals to judge what that looks like? Who are we to say what is actually right and wrong? It's not my place, it's certainly not my place and I genuinely believe that it's not really anybody's place in space. And maybe I feel very strongly about this because, you know, I think for the better part of my life I've felt a lot of judgment about the ideas that I hold, the values that I hold, the choices that I make. Often my choices don't make any sense to any of the people around me. And if I do feel like I need to explain it, all I ever say is I can't explain it to you. All I know is that I feel like I'm supposed to. That's it. It's just that simple, because the English language can rarely articulate what the soul knows.

Sherisse Alexander:

The soul communicates in emotion and emotion. Even the words that we use to describe emotion, emotion it can't cover every one of them. It tries, it does a really good job of trying. It can't cover every one of them. It tries, it does a really good job of trying, but it can't possibly cover it all. So I guess, in this very maiden podcast.

Sherisse Alexander:

What I would pose to you just to ponder is do you feel like you have an experience of unconditional love in your life? And it's that love that is just so heart expansive that you know in the depth and the core of your soul that it didn't matter what that person or what that animal did to you, that you would still love them regardless and that, at the end of the day, even if it meant that you needed to make a different choice for yourself because that experience was no longer resonating with you, could you still love that person? Would you still be loving, willing to love that person? And I think that that's where it really begins. Do can we identify what that feeling is?

Sherisse Alexander:

And the reason why I felt moved is because, you know, I was journaling and I was thinking about this and I was like, well, where is it really easy for me to embody this? And I instantly went to my kids. I was instantly able to say that is where I feel kids and animals, kids and animals is where it's really easy for me to embody unconditional love, where there's absolutely no expectations. So I said to myself in my journal, I said you know what the next time I have this idea of what somebody should do, how they should make me feel what they should do and how they should operate, and all these shoulds that I place on these other people. I'm going to think about my kids and move back to a place and space of unconditional love. So thank you for joining me today on this supremely short iteration of my thoughts and feelings. I hope to have you join me again next time. Enjoy the day, thank you, bye.