On this Valentine’s Day, Heart Day, I walked among the trees, beside the white capped lake and laughed as my little dog’s ears looked like wings. Victoria Erickson’s words came to my mind. Like the cold, the words, “Soulmates…make you feel the most. … [They] hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope,” gathered me into their glove.

There are those I consider soulmates, who have taught me to feel the most and “taste like hope.” A PapaBear, a Starkle, a Tigress, a soul sister, a dork in black socks and others. These precious friends, surely from the beginning, were meant to be in my life, to guide, teach, and breathe “magic into the mundane.” As I walked others blew into me. Others you may not readily recognize as soulmates. Those I sit and walk with every day. The children of this world crying out in pain. The earth herself. All life lived in abuse, hunted, and treated as trophies or inconveniences. They have truly hurled my heart into the abyss. When I think I cannot love or care anymore, they “make me feel the most and burn “edges and scars and stars.”

Whispering, “Promise to stay wild with me” I sat on the earth and made a heart out of pebbles. Four geese that had been walking on the ice covered lake took flight. The peek-a-boo sun threw glitter upon the ice. The mountains seemed to laugh. The normally still lake was high fiving the shore. No one was there but me. Everyone was there with me.

On this Valentine’s Day, this Heart Day, to all soulmates I bow in gratitude. And as I raise my eyes of thanks and love, I whisper with a heart seated giggle…”Promise to stay wild with me.”