A complicated topic my entire adult life, my definition of love has been ever-changing.  But I never understood it – not really – before becoming a mom to the child I was blessed with.

Loving Kiran looks very different from loving anyone else – or even from how I expected loving a child would look.  It is love in action.  It involves a lot of advocating and physical care-taking.  It is often putting my own needs to the side in order to attend to Kiran’s needs.

It is exhausting and rewarding and the best love I could have ever imagined.

And Kiran’s love?  Pure.  Though he requires a lot on a daily basis, he really doesn’t ask for much.  He just loves being with me – being with people.  He just wants attention and to be heard.  He is not a particularly needy child, while requiring so much more care than most.

I have always known the purest form of love is being willing to lay down your life for someone else.  I have never felt that kind of love more than I feel it for Kiran.  And not just my actual life – if I could, I would take on every challenge, every moment of pain, every prod, poke, surgery, negative experience – if I could, I’d give him everything good from my life and take on everything bad from his.

But I love him, best I can, how I can.  I walk alongside him.  I encourage him.  I take care of him.  I lose sleep for him.  I fight for him.  My entire world has changed because of him, and my entire concept of love has been shaped by him.

I can’t imagine ever loving anyone more.  I tell him all the time: Kiran is my favorite human being.