Welcome to #Signs of Love—a place where I share my thoughts about the intersection of faith, love, loss, family, justice, growth, spirituality, consciousness and culture.

For the first thirty-five years of my life, I thought that more knowledge was the answer to every question: read, study, learn, apply. That was the drill. I was convinced that if I just stuck to the “facts,” and “thought it through,” my marriage would flourish; my kids would be perfect; my heart would be whole.

You can imagine how that turned out.

Surprisingly, at least to me, not well.

In my desire to do it all right, I was doing much of it wrong and hurting the people I love.  That realization broke my heart and opened my mind, which is exactly the right place to start over. And so I did. I started to do the hard work of integration, becoming a whole person who relies on her head, her heart and her body. I gained some hard-won wisdom and I finally began to understand what it meant to truly love.

Near the end of his life, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Everything I understand, I understand because I love.” That’s become true for me as well and #Signs of Love is where I share my stories about what Love’s teaching me.

If you’d like to be in touch about direction, retreat or writing opportunities, please email me at Alikirks@sbcglobal.net.