Love as a Hobby

Ridiculous, right?

Love should NEVER be treated as a hobby!

Sadly, far too many of us treat it that way.

Far too many of us take it for granted that the people we love know that we love them and we forget that everything INCLUDING LOVE takes practice.

This forgetfulness doesn’t discriminate. The young are as forgetful as the old.

Parents sometimes forget to continue to show love to their own kids when they become step or adoptive parents. Kids sometimes begin to take for granted the love of adoptive parents, when they discover their biological parents and try to form relationships with them.

Either way, when family members begin to feel that you are pulling away and excluding them from your expressions of love, they begin to pull away too. It’s as if a door that was wide open to let love flow through slowly starts to swing closed.

Once it is closed, there is no knowing if it will ever open again.

There are far too many stories on Reddit about parents ending up on the wrong side of a closed door because they alienate their children. Often, they do that by trying too hard to please new or non-family members, in an attempt to make them feel included.

Just as prevalent as those stories are the stories of the adopted children that I mentioned earlier, who tell their loving, adoptive parents, “You’re not my REAL parents.” and they begin to…