Love is a Hug: How it Happened

A few weeks ago, my friend Cil and I came out with a children's book called Love is a Hug, which is a fun little story/poem I wrote during quarantine that Cil illustrated.

The concept started as a poem about a little girl who was friends with a bird. Then, it turned into a bit about a girl who wanted to hug everyone in the world. I thought, "Wouldn't it be silly to get this illustrated and publish it," and that's when I contacted Cil.

They did an excellent job, and I wanted to give you their comment about working on the book before diving into why I wrote it.

"I was surprised and honored to be asked to illustrate my dear friend Grace's children's book. My first thought was to include diversity in the characters with different body types and races. I wanted Cindy to be a young black girl because most books have Caucasian main characters. It's important to empower young leaders of color to impact the world with kindness and love.

Using watercolor paint allowed me to create a unique color palette and show texture in the brush strokes. I had so much fun creating the look for each character, especially Cindy and the man by the riverside. I laughed while drawing the scene of Cindy leaping to hug the riverman."

You should hire them for any and all projects that require illustrations, and I can't say thank you enough for helping me with this project, Cil. When you read this, please know collaborating with you was a dream come true. You're super talented and knocked this project out of the park. It wouldn't be a beautiful story without you.

So, Love is a Hug started out as another story/poem called Birds Don't Have Hands, which I will read to you now.

*clears throat*

Laurie saw a bird so she waved.

The bird turned its head, which is bird lingo for “What’s going on little girl?”

The bird flapped her wings and sat on Laurie’s head.

They were friends now, and Laurie named her Happy.

Every day, Laurie would wave at Happy as she hopped off to school.

One day, Happy brought her a string.

When Laurie saw it, she tied it in a bow.

Because Happy didn’t have hands.

So she couldn’t tie string into a bow.

But Laurie was too big to find string down below.

So Happy would look near and far to find strings.

And together, Happy and Laurie made beautiful things.

Bows, upon, bows,

Some that stretched from Laurie’s ears down to her toes.

They’d look all day together for ribbons and strings!

Laurie would smile while Happy would sing.

Happy carried bows to different nests.

While Laurie gave away all the rest.

They were a team,

But one day, Happy flew away.

And Laurie cried on that day.

“Where did she go?” she asked her mom.

But her mom didn’t know.

Because where do birds go?

And why do they leave?

Laurie wondered if she had something to achieve.

Or maybe conceive? (It was mating season.)

Did she not love Laurie anymore?

But that wasn’t true.

Happy loved Laurie, but there was something she needed to do.

You see, Happy met this bird next door.

And she needed to see what he had in store.

One day, while Laurie was riding her bike,

She saw a nest with a ribbon on top.

Then, she saw Happy with her husband and baby tots.

Laurie waved.

But Happy didn’t wave back.

Instead, she sat on her head.

Then sang her a song before flying away.

Laurie knew why she couldn’t stay.

But she smiled all the way home.

Because she loved Happy, and Happy loved her.

But Laurie had hands.

And Happy had wings.

And sometimes you love a bird that has to love other things.

Sometimes you love someone who has no space for you.

But it’s okay because you can fly too.

*~*~*~*

I wrote this poem after a break-up, and it was one of the first times I was honest about how I felt in a post-breakup situation. I let myself be sad. Do you know the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Do you remember how at end the Grinch's heart grew three sizes? That's how it felt when I let myself be upset. I felt sad but warm because I was honest about my feelings.

It's not that I didn't want to turn this poem into a book. But I felt, at the moment, it wasn't the story I wanted to share with the world. The honesty of the bird poem helped me find the story for Love is a Hug.

I feel like hugs are the warmest expression of love because they require being close to someone. Being close to someone, emotionally, requires honesty and acceptance, and hugs represent this concept of emotional closeness to me.

In high school and college, I was a cold and emotionally distant person. I wasn't compassionate to myself, and I tried to filter my feelings through what was "okay" to feel and what wasn't okay to feel... Which makes no sense now, but that's where I was mentally for the majority of my life because I was taught to filter my emotions. It wasn't until February of 2020 that I realized how much I manipulated my own emotions by accident because of how I grew up. I didn't know what manipulation was until February, to be honest, or gaslighting. Then, I started reading about it on Instagram (shout out slide shows) and I was like...

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.

Wait a minute.

This sounds... A lot like... My childhood.

It's not that people told me my feelings were wrong, but that's also exactly what happened. It wasn't always direct though. I was told different variations of, "God's got this. Don't worry." "Worrying is a sin." "God doesn't give you a spirit of fear." "Don't be afraid." "Pray about it." Or "If you really felt that way, you'd do this about it." Or being told, flat out, "You can't feel that way." Or "Why would you feel that way?" All of these antidotes were well-intended, but that doesn't make them okay.

I had bad anxiety as a kid. Like, I'd spend multiple nights a week crying on the toilet because I was in pain, or I'd cry myself to sleep because I was so scared of messing up at school. Do you know what I found out in college? 90% of that was gas. I could have taken a TUMS and called it a day, but I didn't know about TUMS until college. The only medicine we had growing up was Pepto Bismol, Children's Motrin, and Coca-Cola.

If I got sick, my dad wrapped me up in the wool blanket he was issued in the Navy, threw me an orange, and said, "Good luck," then left me in a room for three days.

I didn't know you could take medicine for Cold and Flu until college either. I got a fever once, and my roommate was like, "Do you want some Nyquil?" And I was like, "What the fuck is Nyquil?" She was like, "Yeah, if you think you're about to come down with something, you can take Nyquil and knock it out in one night."

Life = Changed. I didn't know life could be that simple. I didn't know you could fix problems. I thought you had to deal with shit that happened. I had no idea you could be preventative. I also didn't know you could take medicine for allergies until I was 19. Spring can never come early enough now that I live Claritin Clear™.

But anyway, I'm only using the way my family treated illness as a metaphor for how we treated emotions. There was no way to deal with our problems because they either weren't acknowledged, or it was a hopeless situation. Like my stomach cramps could have been fixed if I laid on my side for thirty minutes and didn't eat three bowls of ice cream a day, but no one knew anything. I think it's because none of us were practicing active listening. It's not that my parents didn't try. They didn't know I was lactose intolerant. But when it came to having my voice heard, the response was the same.

There was little mutual respect, and if you didn't get something right, that was communicated through passive-aggressive comments or lectures about what emotions you were allowed to feel. If you got upset about being talked down to, you needed "thick skin." To cope, I tried my best not to feel the wrong thing because if I cried, I'd get in trouble or told I was wrong for crying.

I feel like I need to put a disclaimer on my posts though because I think my family reads them? My parents taught me right from wrong, how to work hard, and sacrificed a lot for me. They aren't bad parents. We love each other, but we don't call each other.

So back to my childhood. (I promise this will all circle back to the book.) That tension was a lot of energy to navigate as a kid. When I quarantined at home, I was reminded of how suffocating it was to live in this tension. People will say they're worried about you, but then use your emotions against you to make you think you're crazy or have "fallen from the truth." When people say things like this to me, it gives them a sense of control. What they believe to be helpful, loving guidance stems from fear. Because when you're afraid of someone, you want to control them. When you love someone, you want to listen.

As a kid, this is what I heard, "Hey, here's how your feelings are wrong. You cannot trust yourself. If you don't follow my way, I will judge you, but also, you're allowed to do what you want because I can't stop you. However, I will ignore you if I think you're wrong, or if you prove me wrong. I'll deny it! Deny! Deny! Deny!"

When I was younger, I didn't realize this was Grade A manipulation, and it's a part of me too because I'm still unlearning manipulative tactics and having to practice feeling my feelings.

This desire for control was the tension that created and inspired my anxiety. When I was anxious as a kid, I would hold my breath because I had to brace myself for what I was about to be told or hold back tears. Up until a few months ago, I didn't realize I held my breath whenever I got uncomfortable or anxious. I'd go minutes without breathing without even realizing it. Okay, it felt like minutes. It was probably twenty seconds.

I never even thought about it until I was listening to a Deepak Chopra meditation video and he said, "Notice if you hold onto to the breath, you suffocate. This is the nature of all experience. No experience is graspable. Because all experiences arise and subside eternally." That's when I realized what I was doing. I was attempting to hold onto the mistakes I made because they had been held against me. But if I held onto them, it meant I was in control.

Holding that tension kept my ego in the driver's seat, which meant my ego was dictating my choices, not my being.

My therapist says love comes from being, and I have to agree. When I am loving, I am practicing forgiveness. I'm releasing myself of the tension I created and accepting that every moment comes and goes, eternally.

In college, when I got a hug, I'd almost tear up because I could feel my soul warm-up for half-second, and I was like... "That. I want more of that," but I didn't know how to create that inside myself. I didn't go around hugging everyone, but imagine if I had been a hug fiend.

I am angry at the people I trusted that hurt me, but I am not resentful. There is tension, but I am learning to hold it with with respect and love. I had to let go of the resentment to make space for healing. Which, to me, is best represented through the metaphor of a hug because hugs used to be the only way I could release the tension I held in my soul... The tension was my shame and because of my emotional dependency issues, I didn't allow myself to let go of any shame until I was accepted by someone. And this process of "acceptance" and "letting go" manifested in the form of a hug.

I have learned now that if I want to feel like I'm constantly being hugged--if I want my soul to feel warm and fuzzy-- if I want to feel like I'm falling in love on a fall day in Central Park--I have to practice forgiveness. This is the truth I have found to work for my life, and that is the point of the book, to remind you of the warmth that already exists inside of you so you can share it with others.