Today I Choose to be Loving – How to be Loving

The Real Truth About How to Be Loving

One of the greatest blessings of my life is that all of my kids loved having their friends at our house when they were growing up. I always gave them the room for that, and because of it, I ended up being a “second mom” to many of them. Over the years, Justin, James, Alex, Gatlin, Emily, Sullivan—and so many others—became my otro boys and girls, as dear to me as my own children.

Being loving to this extended circle of kids has meant many things. It’s meant leaving them the space to make their mistakes, and then being there to help pick up the pieces when they did. It’s meant remembering where I was at their age, and offering grace instead of judgment. It’s meant listening and simply being with them, rather than trying to swoop in and “solve” everything.

Two of them have even been married in my backyard, which feels like the most beautiful full-circle expression of what that love created—our home became their home, a place where milestones could unfold.

For me, being loving has never been about grand gestures. It’s about presence, patience, and the steady choice to make people feel safe, seen, and cared for. That love has multiplied over the years, filling my life with more joy than I could have imagined when the first group of kids came through my front door.

That’s what I’ve learned about love: it doesn’t always look like grand gestures or perfect advice. Most of the time, it’s about showing up consistently, listening more than you speak, and creating a sense of safety that lets people be fully themselves.

Understanding What Real Love Looks Like

Learning how to be loving often requires unlearning what we think love should look like. Movies and novels have taught us that love is dramatic, intense, all-consuming. But the most transformative love I’ve experienced and witnessed has been quiet, steady, and spacious—the kind that gives people room to grow, fail, and find their way.

Research from Dr. John Gottman shows that successful relationships aren’t built on grand romantic gestures but on small, consistent acts of attention and care. He calls these “emotional deposits”—moments when we turn toward someone rather than away from them, when we listen with curiosity rather than judgment, when we offer presence rather than solutions.

Those kids who filled our house taught me that being loving sometimes means stepping back rather than stepping in. It means trusting people to learn from their own mistakes rather than trying to prevent all pain. It means offering your steady presence without trying to control outcomes.

The Paradox of Loving Without Fixing

One of the hardest lessons in learning how to be loving is resisting the urge to fix, solve, or rescue. When someone you care about is struggling, every instinct screams to make it better. But real love often requires sitting with discomfort—both theirs and your own—while they work through whatever they need to work through.

Dr. Brené Brown’s research on empathy reveals something crucial: the most healing response to someone’s pain isn’t trying to fix it, but sitting with them in it. “At least you…” statements or immediate problem-solving can actually create more isolation. Connection happens when we show up without an agenda beyond being present.

When those young people came to me with heartbreaks, failures, and confusion, my first instinct was often to offer advice or try to spare them further pain. But I learned that the most loving thing I could do was listen deeply, validate their experience, and trust their capacity to find their own way forward.

Love as Creating Safety

The most loving homes, relationships, and friendships aren’t necessarily the happiest or most harmonious. They’re the safest. They’re places where people can be honest about their struggles, admit their mistakes, and show up imperfectly without fear of rejection or judgment.

Creating that kind of safety requires emotional regulation on your part. When someone shares their mess with you, your job isn’t to clean it up—it’s to remain calm, curious, and non-reactive. It’s to communicate through your presence that they’re still loveable exactly as they are, struggles and all.

Those weddings in my backyard weren’t just celebrations—they were testimonies to what happens when young people have a safe place to land during their formative years. They chose to celebrate their biggest milestones in the space where they’d always felt unconditionally accepted.

The Multiplication Effect of Loving

Here’s what surprised me most about opening our home and hearts to all those kids: the love didn’t divide—it multiplied. Having more young people to care about didn’t dilute my love for my own children; it expanded my capacity to love everyone more deeply.

Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Siegel explains this through his research on neuroplasticity. Our brains literally change when we practice love and compassion. The neural pathways associated with empathy, patience, and emotional regulation strengthen with use. The more you love, the better you become at loving.

Each child who trusted me with their secrets, their heartbreaks, their dreams taught me something new about how to be present, how to listen, how to offer support without control. Those lessons made me a better mother to my own kids, a better friend, a better human being.

How to Cultivate a Loving Presence

Practice Curious Listening: Instead of listening for what you can fix or improve, listen to understand. Ask questions that help people explore their own thoughts and feelings rather than offering immediate solutions.

Remember Your Own Young Self: When someone makes mistakes or poor choices, remember the grace you needed at their age. This doesn’t mean enabling harmful behavior, but it means responding with compassion rather than judgment.

Create Consistent Availability: Being loving isn’t about dramatic gestures—it’s about reliable presence. Let people know they can count on you to show up, listen, and care, even when they’re not at their best.

Trust People’s Capacity to Grow: Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is believe in someone’s ability to learn and change, even when they don’t believe in themselves yet.

Love in Different Seasons of Life

The way we express and receive love evolves as we grow. The love I offered those teenagers was different from the love I show my adult children now, which is different from how I love Curtis, which is different from how I love my friends. But the core remains the same: presence, acceptance, and the steady choice to see people as worthy of care.

As we age, we often become better at loving because we become less concerned with being right and more concerned with being kind. We learn to hold people lightly—caring deeply while attachment less desperately. We understand that love sometimes means letting go, trusting people to their own journeys.

When Love Feels Difficult

Not everyone will be easy to love. Some people will take advantage of kindness, reject offers of care, or respond to love with suspicion or hostility. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed at loving—it means you’re dealing with someone who has their own wounds, fears, and protective mechanisms.

Dr. Fred Luskin’s research on forgiveness shows that the ability to love difficult people isn’t about them—it’s about you. It’s about choosing to respond from your values rather than their behavior, about maintaining your own emotional center regardless of how others react to your care.

This doesn’t mean tolerating abuse or enabling harmful behavior. Sometimes love requires boundaries, consequences, or even distance. But it always requires seeing the humanity in others, even when they can’t see it in themselves.

The Legacy of Love

Those young people who found safety in our home are now adults with homes of their own. Several of them have told me that they try to create the same kind of welcoming space for others that they found with us. The love that multiplied in our house continues to multiply in theirs.

This is the true power of learning how to be loving—it doesn’t end with you. Every person who experiences unconditional acceptance, patient listening, and steady support is more likely to offer those same gifts to others. Love creates more love, safety creates more safety, and presence creates more presence.

Today, choose to be loving. Not because it will always be easy or appreciated, but because the world desperately needs more spaces where people can be imperfect and still feel cherished. More relationships where presence matters more than performance. More love that trusts people’s capacity to grow rather than trying to force their growth.

The most loving thing you can offer anyone—whether it’s a child finding their way, a friend in crisis, or a stranger having a difficult day—is your full presence and the quiet assurance that they matter exactly as they are. Everything else is just details.