Love in Retrospect | Sharing the Love

OMG!!! I have been loved on, and loved on, and loved on some more, throughout my journey over the past few months. I can't begin to describe the experience. I will one day...in a book of course! It's been absolutely amazing being open to receive healthy love from every direction, in unexpected places, in ways so simple, yet so profound. I am so full. This week, since we have nothing to officially reflect on in love (I'm going to get my ish together, promise!), I am going to take a few minutes to share some of the love with you. 

In case you haven't been told today or this week:

You are wonderful!

You are thought about!

You are smart!

You are funny!

You are loved!

You are cared for!

You are a success!

You are missed!

I could go on and on...but I just wanted to remind you of how remarkably special you are and tell you that you are needed. 

Never, EVER forget how much you matter in this world and how your mere presence changes someone's life for the better. 

Thank you for stopping by! Have a wonderful weekend. See you next week! ;-) 

P.S. I wish I could figure out how not to look so weird on the video capture pic?

With Love & Gratitude,

~C. Nzingha Smith

Love in Retrospect | Out to Lunch

Hello & welcome to Love in Retrospect, here on ZingNotes.me. Normally, I would be saying this live via video, but due to my intense travel schedule this week, my brain is fried, and overloaded with so much new information that I haven't been able to focus properly. I haven't been able to string my words together to form valid thoughts or to write intelligently on any one thing in particular. I'm giving a new face to scatterbrained! 

So, instead of stinking up the place with a bout of unfocused, verbal diarrhea, I will simply pause to recompose myself, get my focus back, and will plan to be back on track with posts next week. :) I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I look forward to chatting with you same time, same place! Until next week. Take care.

With Love & Gratitude,

~C. Nzingha 

Love in Retrospect | Poem:Touch

Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate here is a love poem entitled, Touch 

from Lust Have Recipes, Aphrodisiac Cookbook.

With Love & Gratitude,

~C. Nzingha

Love Lesson | Caution in Love, The Most Fatal

Frustration in love is often caused by our holding back our true feelings. We want to say something, but don't. We long for that kiss, but don't seize the moment. We secretly want to express our love in every way possible, but decide not to. We keep the unexpressed love inside, and after a while it begins to eat away at us, turning into awkward behavior, nervousness, paranoia, and sickness. We starve it and kill it off, instead of allowing it to grow, flourish, and nurture our lives in ways we couldn't possibly be able to anticipate.

Love U | 10 Ways to Touch

Physical touch is one of five types of affection. Studies show that touch is the first sense to develop in humans and may be the last one to fade. Our skin is our largest organ and is very sensitive and responsive to human touch. We have approximately 5 million touch receptors in our skin, with 3,000 in a finger tip alone. So, why as we age do we tend to touch each other less?

Well first, everyone is all uptight about nothing. You would think as we age, we would get more mature about the nature of touching, but instead we get more uptight and less curious. The result is anxiety, more stress, lack of intimacy and closeness with our partners and more sickness in our society.

Everyone thinks everything has to be about sex all the time. Light bulb: it doesn't. The benefits of touching span far beyond an orgasm.

Love Lessons | Friedrich Nietzsche on Unhappy Marriages

Merriam Webster defines a friend as: 1. a person who you like and enjoy being with. 2. a person who helps or supports someone or something.

Friendship is a form of love, and is complimentary to romantic love, but isn't the same as romantic love. You can have romantic love without taking the time to develop a friendship of mutual interests and affection. We have the ability to love people we don't like. I call it polite tolerance.

In the case of our romantic relationships, love without a proper foundation built on mutual friendship starts off extremely fragile, like a decorative bouquet of crepe paper flowers.

Love Lessons & Fishing | Mark Twain

I could argue both sides. The pros and cons of using your brain or heart when searching for love (too many episodes of Law & Order & the hidden inner lawyer in me coming out). The more useful baiting tool however, at the end of the day (and because it sometimes gets exhausting being difficult for the hell of it) I will have to admit and resolve to agree with Mark on this one, is your heart.

The most satisfying of all finds are the one's made up of genuine feelings. Not because of the things our minds rationalize us into thinking are the best for us. Your heart will always gravitate to truth.

I have never been a fan of people who claim to like people or feelings to grow on them...I equate that to fungus (I will save that for another post). I don't want anything to grow on me. I don't want to have to think about it. It is. You know it. It sets you on fire and drives you to madness and you like it, crave it and are lost when it evades you. You don't need words to explain it. You can let it be because it existed before the two of you crossed paths and were swept up in its power.

Or it isn't. Words are needed when it isn't. You know when we have to search for justifications and make sense of it. To explain and fill in the gaps that true love fill naturally. When it isn't you allow your brain to keep your heart silenced and love often turns out toxic for the parties involved.

Our hearts will always have the answers we seek to find, all we have to do is listen to it. The trick is we have to shut our mouths and be quiet enough to hear what it has to say to us. This is the hard part for most people. Love lesson: Use your heart to seek and find love.

Do you let your brain or heart lead you in and out of love?

With Love & Gratitude,
~C. Nzingha