What it Means to Love Without Conditions.

By Carol Reedy Rogero

The very moment you become a parent your heart cracks open.

It’s not just a Lilliputian hairline crack, but a canyonesque fissure, through which your child enters, through which he/she will travel all the days of your life.

You will carry your child and their heart with superhero stamina and strength, never noticing the additional weight.

As he/she grows from playgrounds to proms your roles will be altered one hundred times and somewhere between band-aids and butterfly kisses and waiting up to make sure the midnight curfew is met. That fissure in your heart becomes filled with a mighty river that floods cyclically and nourishes the surrounding valleys, a powerful river that carries your child to lands near and far, to discover grand treasures and experience necessary tribulations.

On no particular day, your child will decide to try other modes of transportation and the flood gates will be opened. And just as you have during all the other days of their lives, your river of love will carry them out into the world.

With parent’s eyes you will ache and rejoice as they grow in knowledge and courage, as they take risks you’d advise against, as they succeed and fail, as they make decisions you disagree with, as they open your eyes and heart even wider to the greatest of gifts—unconditional love.

What is your definition of love? Send us your story! Send submissions to editor@thetattooedbuddha.com and create@rebellesociety.com and your story may be featured on both sites!

Carol Reedy Rogero is a 6th grade teacher by day, second act poet/writer by night, and anytime lover of books and travel. She scours the beach regularly for trash and heart shaped coquina. She blogs and is on Facebook where she hopes readers feel a connection and find something inspirational that speaks to their heart and touches their soul.