Love on the Street: What Does Love Mean to You and How Does It Show Up?

For the month of Valentine's Day, the Emerald took to the streets to celebrate love. We asked our beloved community how they describe and experience love. Responses ranged from watching people take care of each other in community on a bus or in the grocery store, to the joy that comes from giving a compliment, to reveling in the love a pet gives.

Here's from our streets!

Jessica Bedi with Matt Hayward. (Photo: Gol Holghooghi)

South Seattle Emerald: What is love to you?

Jessica: It's a lot of things. It's what brings you both the sad tears and the happy tears. It's the stuff that makes you want to grow and get better, but not the stuff that makes you want to hide and be small. It's the feeling of knowing that you're supposed to take up space and not shrink. So it's the chance to be who you are without any apologies, but also work on who you are to be better at it.

Taf Marshall. (Photo: Gol Holghooghi)

Taf: We try to guard ourselves when we go through life, and we become rigid, right? You know, we become jaded, and we say, "Love isn't for me. Everybody's so hateful." You're projecting this hurt, this woundedness that you have, that we all have. It's easy to come from that perspective.

It's a little bit harder when you have to say, "I've been through things. You've been through things. Let's find connection."

If you can get through whatever you're going through and understand that it's a connection, you talking about it is healing yourself. There's certain conversations that I have that heal that love that I lacked for self.

South Seattle Emerald: Tell me about a time that someone was loving to you or when you offered a gesture of love to someone else.

Taf: I gave a compliment to somebody. Sweet lady, shout out to her. She said I gave her a compliment. And she was just like, "I really needed to hear that from somebody, especially outside of myself, especially somebody that I didn't know."

I think if you could operate in love, it's just- so fun, it's just so joyful.

"Feet on the Streets No. 15" (Photo: Alph Thomas/Flickr, under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)

Molly: [Love means] getting to feel comfortable in my own skin and knowing that I make the person I love feel the same way.

South Seattle Emerald: Any stories of how you felt loved before?

Molly: My husband's pretty awesome, I think. … Yesterday … he had gotten up early and wiped all the snow off my car so I could leave for work, and he did it in, like, shorts and a T-shirt, and it was just the nicest thing. … I don't need diamonds and I don't need fancy gestures. It's just nice to know that somebody's watching out for me, especially right now, watching out for me.

Cary McManus Davis and Trevor Davis. (Photo: Gol Holghooghi)

Cary: We're at a beautiful co-op right now, but my wife and I shop a lot … at the Rainier Beach Safeway, and the staff there are just so lovely — and they recognize us, and they say nice things to us. And it's like that, having a community grocery store where we go and people say hi to us. It's just so nice.

Trevor: Red Apple's the same way on Beacon Hill, yeah. It just feels real good in there.

Cary and Trevor: Just walk, get on the bus, be out. … The bus is a place where everyone's kind of working together. You see people looking out for each other on the bus. The bus is a star that burns bright with the sense of community. I had … a situation on the bus where somebody was trying to get on the bus in a wheelchair, but they also had a lot of bags and stuff, and people just got up out of their seats and helped. Like, grab the bags and brought them on the bus. And [it] wasn't anybody they knew, but it was kind of like, if every day, if we all just … help out, then we're all going to get where we're going a little faster.

Cary: I work a lot with in-home care workers and those folks, they face a lot of headwinds. It's not a job that pays very well, and we work a lot with those folks to make sure that they can have better pay and better working conditions and better benefits and all these things. At the heart of all that is they tell the stories of the clients that they work with. What better way that you could accommodate love, by doing what you can to have someone just live the way they feel is right for them every day.

Gwyn: Love is everything, in my opinion, and it is unconditional no matter what. The look you get from people. Waking up, the feeling of having someone there, versus the feeling of not.

Charles Thompson describing the beginnings of a former relationship and what love that brings. (Photo: Gol Holghooghi)

Charles: I went to Bumbershoot, and that's when I told her I fell in love with [her]; well, I lip-read it to her, because I was scared to say it. So I just, you know … and she understood it. She read exactly what I was saying. It was a moment. We were at a concert, at the Bumbershoot. We were just holding, dancing — like, it was a beautiful moment. That was the day I met her son. We're not together anymore. I'm still there for her son. That's when it comes to unconditional love. He can call me anytime, we can hang out anytime. I'm always going to be there to support him in all those ways. It's just I'm still in love with his mom, and it hurts and it's hard. I'm still dealing with it, but I'm also happy in a way. I got positive energy. But [as] long as you care, and you understand who you are, and you love yourself, everything will be all right.

South Seattle Emerald: What does love mean to you, and how does it show up for you?

Keisha: Love means that somebody truly cares about who you are as a person, and it shows up for me in the smiles on my kids' faces and the hugs I get from them and the smile on my dogs' faces as well.

Phillip: Love is showing up for the people in your life, whether it's physical, like leaving a note or leaving your mark in a way that shows that you're thinking of them. Being there, even if you're not physically there.