Love in the Summer Porch

​I’ve spent years studying love. I’ve taught it, written about it, and dedicated more than thirty years helping couples understand what it takes to build and sustain meaningful relationships. And, may I say, it has been an incredibly rewarding journey.

Yet, like many people who devote themselves to a life’s work, I suppose I believed I had learned a great deal about love...about attachment, vulnerability, communication, and all the many ways we continue to show up for the people and beings we love.

And then this summer, love became my teacher.

When you think about it, our lives are made up of ongoing stories. We all walk around with personal narratives shaped by our experiences with people, places, and events. Some stories are happy, some are sad, some are unforgettable, and some are just unremarkable moments that we may not recognize as meaningful until much later. Still, what gives these stories their deeper significance is the way they shape our identity, our values, our connections, and create a sense of continuity across time.

My understanding of love has always been rooted in that kind of thinking. Never the simplified version of love that arrives in neat beginnings and endings, but rather the more complex, lived version that unfolds through attention, presence, responsibility, patience, and staying in relationship with another being. I’ve come to think of myself as a modern-day warrior of the heart...a phrase I often use with clients...on a mission to reconcile the mystery and the mastery of love.

Love is not simply an idea or a feeling we experience; it is a sustained practice of connection, one that can reshape the way a life is lived. However, for all my years of deliberate practice, I am still surprised by how those lessons actually arrive. If truth be told, we rarely discover them in the moments we expect. Occasionally, they appear in the most ordinary spaces where life unfolds.

For me, that place has been the summer porch.

There is a certain irony in this because I have often described it as my most favourite room in the house, the room where I spend the most time during the summer months. It is where I begin my mornings with my coffee, listening to the gentle babble of the pond just beside the porch, watching the garden change around me, writing my next story, or simply allowing myself the rare luxury of stillness.

This summer, however, that space became something entirely different.

Callie chose this spot as her healing refuge. And because she did, it naturally became mine as well. Without any conscious decision, without any plan, my days began to revolve around that space and around her.

Funny how love works that way.

It rarely arrives with a grand announcement. More often, it enters into the routines of our lives, changing our days before we even realize what has happened.

Even so, as profound as this experience has been, it has not always been easy...because love, especially when it is intertwined with caregiving, asks something of us that we don’t always feel prepared to give.

It asks for patience when we want answers, acceptance when we want control, and the ability to remain present even when our minds are already racing ahead, imagining all the possibilities we desperately wish we could prevent.

The truth is, there were many moments this summer when I felt less like I was sitting in my favourite room of the house and more like I was confined to it.

A prisoner of my porch.

The summer porch, which had always represented relaxation and enjoyment, at times felt like a place where my world had become smaller. The things that usually fill my days...projects, responsibilities, the satisfaction of accomplishing things...were often put aside because caring for Callie became the priority.

And I struggled with that.

I struggled with the feeling that my own life had been placed on hold. I struggled with the guilt of even admitting that, because how could I possibly resent the very thing I would choose again and again: being there for a beloved companion who needed me?

But perhaps that is another truth about love. It does not always feel noble or effortless. Sometimes love is exhausting. Sometimes love asks us to hold two very different feelings at the same time: deep devotion and deep fatigue, gratitude and frustration, tenderness and fear.

The nights were often the hardest.

When the house became still, and there were fewer distractions, my mind seemed to become much louder. I would lie awake listening...not only for Callie’s movements, but also to the sound of my own thoughts. The uncertainty was difficult. The waiting was difficult. The not knowing was difficult. Illness is just difficult.

There were nights when I found myself rehearsing outcomes I could not control, imagining possibilities I did not want to face, and bargaining with God when something we love feels fragile...as we so often do.

Because that is what fear does. It tries to prepare us for pain before pain has even arrived.

And although we are often told to think positively, to focus on gratitude, and to appreciate the good moments, the truth is that our minds are wired to search for danger. We are human beings, after all. Our brains are designed to anticipate, to protect, to look ahead.

The challenge is not to never have those thoughts.

The challenge is learning that we do not have to live inside them.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do for ourselves is simply acknowledge the fear, recognize where it comes from, and then try to return to what is actually happening in this moment.

And in that moment, the bout of panting had passed. Callie was sleeping peacefully beside me.

The pond was continuing its steady lull outside the porch. Morning would eventually arrive.
And morning always brought a different perspective.

I would wake up, and there she would be...ready for breakfast, happy to see me, her tail wagging with that unmistakable joy dogs seem to carry so naturally. Whatever fears had consumed me during the night were suddenly softened by the simplicity of that moment.

Callie wasn’t worried about tomorrow.

She was completely happy to be here.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts dogs give us. They trust us without needing guarantees. They trust us without knowing what the next appointment will bring, what the next test result will show, or what the future holds.

They just trust us.

Illness changes the emotional climate of a family. When someone you love is unwell, everyone starts listening more carefully...for footsteps, for phone calls, for test results, for news you hope never comes.

Sitting beside Callie this summer, I found myself remembering when I was six years old, standing in a hospital stairwell, watching my mother’s face to know whether the world was safe.

Children become remarkably fluent in the language of a parent’s expression. We watch closely. We learn what the smallest furrowed brow, the quiet sigh, the whispered conversation, or the tears held back are trying to tell us. Long before we understand illness, we understand fear.

My father was dying.

On another floor of that same hospital, my younger sister had already spent months being treated for severe asthma and eczema. I can still remember walking down the stairwell to visit her after spending time with my father. I remember her crying, begging to come home with us. We couldn’t take her. She was too sick. And I was heartbroken.

Some memories never really leave us. They don’t stay with us because we revisit them often. They stay because they become part of the way we move through the world. Like DNA.

Looking back now, I don’t think I pieced any of this together while sitting beside Callie. I wasn’t analyzing my childhood or searching for old wounds. I was keeping watch over someone I loved.
Only later did I begin to realize that familiar vigilance had first been learned in those hospital corridors all those years ago.

I look down at Callie now, so far removed from that worried child in the stairwell, and I am struck by how differently she carries her vulnerability.

Even after countless trips to the vet, Callie still gets excited when I say, “Do you want to go for a car ride?”

She doesn’t know where we are going.

She only knows that she is going with me.

That kind of trust is sacred.

And for me, showing up became easier because I was no longer doing it alone. When my husband came home, there was a certain comfort in his presence...not because he took away my responsibility or relieved me of my role, but because suddenly I was no longer the only person carrying the weight of uncertainty.

There is something deeply reassuring about another person entering the porch, checking on Callie, asking how she is doing, sharing in the small decisions and observations that have become such a big part of our days.

Sometimes love is not about fixing what cannot be fixed.

Sometimes love is simply knowing that someone else is standing beside you while you walk through something difficult.

Love is not always found in the grand moments we imagine.

Sometimes it is found in a quiet room beside a pond, in a dog who trusts without question, in a husband who comes home and shares the watch, and in the realization that even when fear takes up more space than we would like, love is still there... asking us to return to the present moment.




P.S. Callie is currently feeling much better, though we still don’t know the exact cause of her illness. We know our watch isn’t entirely over, but for now, we are simply enjoying these brighter days on the porch together.