Where Love Heals

If you’ve been following my personal blog, you’ve seen me chasing peace, calm, and ownership over my own happiness, always searching for ways to spread love in the world.

The challenge for a hopelessly emotional woman in love with love is this: What can I fall in love with right now that will feed this hunger in a positive way?

The answer, I discovered, was messy. A stack of half-written stories, incomplete projects, sleepless nights, imaginary worlds sketched on napkins, and the endless pursuit of creative inspiration. But if there’s one truth I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that love rarely shows up on schedule. Love arrives unannounced—in conversation, in simple gestures, in a song that makes electricity pulse through your veins.

I know what I love most. More than human connection, more than knowledge, more than romance, it’s the act of creating: sitting behind a computer, scribbling in a notebook, jotting down a thought mid-conversation, capturing inspiration before it slips away. But in chasing that passion, I’d forgotten something crucial: experience. A writer can’t truly write about love without living it—feeling it in its deepest, rawest forms. Experience births love.

Love found me this summer, in a form I never anticipated. It embraced me the moment I stepped into my first job as a Mental Health Therapist.

The beauty of this love is that I didn’t chase it. I wasn’t seeking a job where I’d fall head over heels for the kids I’d work with—though somehow, that’s exactly what happened. I’d wanted to empower youth, to help them find strength and hope, but I hadn’t expected to love it this much.

Before starting, I gave myself “the talk.” I reminded myself that passion and profession must coexist with boundaries. Years ago, at 22, I couldn’t separate emotion from responsibility. I loved my kids too much, let it cross into my personal life, and learned the hard way how consuming it could be. This time, I told myself: love the kids, earn their trust, show them the world isn’t only harsh—but do not let it fracture your own life. Keep Jacque the human separate from Jacque the therapist.

I was wrong.

I don’t know the exact moment I realized I was falling in love with this job. Maybe it was late nights with like-minded colleagues, sipping mimosas, talking about the kids without violating any confidences. Maybe it was seeing a patient’s eyes light up for the first time, hearing laughter where there had been silence, watching parents cry because they see a difference in their child.

Maybe it was the seven-year-old who clings to me at every session, the nine-year-old sister who paints hearts on my legs with magic markers, telling me she loves talking to me. Or the eleven-year-old boy who insists we’re best friends, the teen who shares every Minecraft conquest, the child who chants about me being a hippie living in a mini-van with a fictional boyfriend and imaginary racehorse. All of them, in their own ways, made sure I’d be back next week.

Maybe it was the boy who calls me his homie, the kid who jokes I’m too short to be an adult, the girl who hugs me and asks about my favorite things. Every interaction has reshaped my understanding of love.

Being a Mental Health Therapist has changed my life. It has redefined what love means. At eleven or thirty-three, love doesn’t have to be a boy-girl romance or a Nicholas Sparks novel. Love is connection, devotion, trust, laughter, guidance, and growth. Love is pouring your heart into others while honoring your own boundaries.

I’ve always been the girl with the permanent smile, the one voted Miss Congeniality, the one whose patience rarely frays. Maybe I wouldn’t always be the star player on a softball team—but these kids would pick me every time. I adore them, they adore me, and every day I’m reminded that the work I do matters.

I learn more about myself with each session. I’ve learned that I can love deeply, give fully, and maintain balance. They’ve taught me to fall in love with life all over again. I came into this field hoping to change the world one kid at a time—but what it’s done is change my world entirely.

I am in love—with these children, this work, these colleagues, and the life I’ve been given—on a level I never imagined possible.

—JMS