Love is stretchy
IWD Daisy Chain Flower Crown on Substack
Welcome to Resurface, with me, Tamzin Merivale.
I’m an intuitive artist, writer and mentor, and this space is for creating deeper connections not only to others, but to parts of ourselves that have been forgotten, neglected, or are waiting to be discovered. My mission is to show you just how much you light up the world a round you, simply by existing. You can learn more about how I do this here.
The following is a post for IWD, as part of this group invitation, it’s not too late if you’d like to join in. It has been a joy to read the contributions to this Substack experiment, thanks so much to everyone who has taken part!
Love is Stretchy
©️ Tamzin Merivale
When I was seventeen, I learnt that love is stretchy.
I went to Senegal alone, far from my family. We didn’t love each other less because I was away － perhaps that seems an obvious thing to say. If anything, we loved each other more. The bond that tied us simply stretched, from one continent to another －love does not diminish with distance.
Now I’m thirty-three. I have a lot more beams of love, tying me to people and places all over the world. My sister in NYC, my friends scattered across the different countries I’ve lived in, my family back home, past loves who I haven’t spoken to for years. Thirty-three years equals hundreds of rays of love and light, formed and solidified over time － love never really breaks.
What came first? Did the strands grow from me to them and from them to me? Or were they already there, long before I was born, laid out like paths to follow, leading one to the other?
The tie between my partner and I － that one is a lifeline, something to grab onto when I’m drifting. No matter where he is, near or far, it’s a tangible, living thing. It has been stretched and tested － it’s solid, but supple, elastic, but unyielding. Sometimes others might get caught in it, if they find themselves nearby; for a moment they can see it, feel it, touch it, for themselves.
As I go about my days, I find myself wondering whose rays I get caught up in. Whose stretchy beams am I stepping across? I like to imagine them in their thousands －columns of light criss-crossing and spreading every which way, all around the globe. The further we go from each other, the longer they extend, the greater their endurance.
It makes me think about the mothers. Well, I think about them all, but especially the mothers. Was their love extinguished, as violently as they were? Like the flame of a candle, snuffed out by thumb and finger, only a wisp of smoke left behind, to prove it existed at all?
I don’t believe so. I think that when they were taken, their love stayed behind.
It multiplied, expanded, and burst out into the world. It came and sought us out.
Perhaps that’s why I find myself so sad, so shaken. Their beams of love have found me, and I’m grieving, angry, for them all.
According to the UN, two mothers are killed every hour in Gaza. I won’t list off more horrifying statistics about Gaza, South Sudan, etc., we already know.
We are not OK, but we won’t give up the fight.