Secret Love Wish

Last year, in fact each year since 1993 I resolved to exercise more and finish a book I am writing.  Well, the book is close to completion and if exercising more means exercising a couple of times a month, I’d say I am on track!  The good news is that it only took me six years!


Each year many of us go through a ritual of re-kindling our best wishes for ourselves.  “This year, I vow to exercise, lose weight, gain weight, stop biting my fingernails...”  The list is as infinite and creative as we are.  I find delight in knowing that this ritual of renewing our resolutions falls right after the rituals of gift-giving.  This giving and receiving seems a treasured means of expressing and re-committing ourselves to the love and kinship we share with our dear ones.


Re-committing to loving each other seems like a grand way to begin a new year, or a new millenium for that matter.  Such a resolution is both easy to renew and to fulfill.  For each time we think of our loved one, we can think of how to best greet them when we next see them. 


We can think of a small and easy way to show them how knowing them enriches us.  Then when we do see them, our whole being seems to carry the power of our love for them.  The smile in greeting is fueled by these moments of stoking the fire of love inside our own hearts and minds.  We have all seen such smiles.  Have we noticed how they are cultivated?


A few years back I saw a young couple in my pyschotherapy practice.  They clearly loved each other deeply.  However, between the demands of their young family, work and community service work, they felt overwhelmed and under-appreciated.  No longer did they do little things for each other to express their caring.  As we talked of the small ways that they used to express their love, their faces softened and their eyes seemed to light up a bit.  It became quite clear that at this time in their life they did not have time for long walks in the mountains or late-night phone calls. 


Slowly at first and almost shyly they began to share their little wishes of what they wanted from each other.  She wanted him to make the coffee in the morning and take the kids to school.  He wanted her to greet him at the end of the day with a smile and a hug.  She asked him to rub her feet at night.  He asked her make sure that her car was full of gas.  They continued to discuss and discover new ways to show each other they cared.  These new ways were small and easy for each of them. 


After a few short weeks, their re-commitment to loving each other and expressing that love was showing up in the shine of their eyes and their rich sweet smiles.  They shared with me that they had also began to ask their children about their “secret love wish.”  Their children loved it!


Instead of secret Santas, this young family resolved to regularly exchange “secret love wishes”.  These “secret love wishes” became a family habit and stretched way past the holidays . . . or as Buzz Lightyear would say, “to Infinity and beyond.”


  1. (c)1999 Melanie McGhee                                                                                                              Originally published in THE DAILY TIMES, Maryville, TN