Love Is

Healing builds wisdom. Ringo collaborated with several songwriters on this warm track from his Liverpool 8 album, exploring all the things love can be: healing, patient, transformative. By this point in his life, Ringo had weathered addiction, loss, and reinvention, giving him real authority to sing about love's power. 

Every line rings true because Ringo lived it. He's singing from the other side of nearly destroying his life through alcohol, losing his closest friends, and having to rebuild himself from scratch. When someone with that history says love heals, we should take note.

All the words about love become real through experience. Ringo’s decades of recovery taught him that love isn't just warm feelings; it's the hard work of showing up when everything in you wants to quit. It's his wife, Barbara, refusing to abandon him when he was abusing alcohol. It's friends who loved him enough to tell him hard truths. 

Living through darkness and healing on the other side brought Ringo wisdom. This song is a hidden gem that takes familiar themes about love and makes them fresh through Ringo’s lived experience. When you've walked through difficulty and come out whole, your message of love carries additional weight.  Ringo's life validates his lyrics.

Today, I will share one lesson about love that I've learned through difficulty, offering wisdom earned rather than theory borrowed.

What difficult experience taught you something true about love? How might sharing that hard-won wisdom help someone else?