Welcome to Love and Friends by me, Colby Mackenzie (CTNC, RYT-200). I’m a reader & writer with a background in nutrition, yoga, and meditation interested in Love as the ultimate healing power.
I’ve been researching ancient and modern healing modalities since an intense bout of chronic illness in 2016. After thousands of hours of research on & practice of many different healing tools, from food and movement to acupuncture, meditation and therapy, I’ve landed on the queen of them all: Love.
Love’s Friends are related concepts & skills like trust, self-esteem, caring, empathy, compassion, and more.
In my own practice, Love and her friends heal. And I want to know more, embody more, share more.
By subscribing, you’ll learn what I learn and hopefully, you’ll love more too.
This love letter is meant to share my work, my journey and my lessons, support you in yours, and ask more questions than give answers on how to live a love-filled life.
It’s is meant to spread love in a world that desperately needs it.
How did I get here?
In May 2016 I got sick with an illness clinically diagnosed as chronic Lyme disease, and have spent the past four years researching and practicing ancient and modern healing modalities.
In June 2020 I sank into a meditative body scan, and asked myself this question:
What do I (& we) need most right now?
My soul answered me with one word: Love.
What’s Love?
Love (verb), according to bell hooks’ All About Love, is best defined by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”.
Love is a choice. Love is action. Love is the path to wholeness.
And Love can be learned.
My offering, for both my own continuous healing & this revolution, may be to love. To learn it, practice it, feel it, share it. I am forever surprised and humbled by the human heart’s capacity. Your heart’s capacity, and mine.
The first few chapters of hooks’ All About Love has taught me much this past week. hooks is a professor, feminist, cultural critic, renowned activist, and beacon of Black intellectual life.
According to her research, there are six essential pillars of love:
Truth
Care
Commitment
Respect
Knowledge
Responsibility.
How do we embody these characteristics of love? We learn, we practice, we share, and we do the loving.
Want to join me in this journey for love? I’ll be exploring all of these concepts and sharing everything I learn with you.
Sign up now so you don’t miss an issue.
In the meantime, tell your friends!