My wife, friend, lover and beloved partner is leaving in the morning for four days in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a journey of the heart for her – she is pursuing the origins of her art – and for me, the first time I have been alone in our home, not the first time I have been alone in my life.

People often confuse loneliness with aloneness, and I have studied and felt and lived both all of my life. They are very different.

Loneliness is a lacking, a feeling that something important is missing, a pain or sadness, a need, an incompleteness or an absence.

Aloneness is the opposite. It is the embodiment of presence, fullness, of being alive, of the joy of being. You are complete. You are whole, you are enough.

For me, true love is not a way of ending loneliness. Real love transforms loneliness into aloneness, it means the help of the other. If I love a person, I must not try to complete them and fulfill them by my presence, by their need for me. My wish is that they not be in need of me, that they can find aloneness in their life, a sense of completeness.

And  that is the experience of Maria’s trip. We’ll get up at 3 a.m. and I will take Maria to the airport. Only when she is free to go, free to follow her heart, free to feel her art is as important as me, as us, will true love be possible, will a genuine sharing of lives occur. Love needs freedom to breathe and grow. We are there.

When I met Maria I was lonely.  Loneliness drove me to madness, nearly to destruction. There was a great hole in my life, in my heart. I was almost always in pain or sadness, I cared nothing for my life, I took no responsibility for it, I had given up on life. I was in great need, my life was incomplete, there was an absence of meaning, intimacy, purpose.

Five years later, I am coming to a place of aloneness, one I think I will experience very deeply this week, much as I will miss Maria. But I will not need her, and she will not need me. There is a difference. My life, thanks to Maria, is filled with presence. There is a fullness to me, a sense of being alive, every day I experience the joy of being. Together or apart, we are complete, I am whole, I am enough.

Tonight she asked me why it was that we both decided I ought not to come. Because, I said, this is not a vacation, not a tour, it is a journey of the soul, you are heading out in search of your roots, your art, your fullness and presence. It is not something we are doing, it is something you are doing.  It is about learning, growing, understanding, creating. For you to be free, I need not to be there. You do not need me there, and I could see in her eyes that she knew that.

Maria has always seen that she needs to make this trip alone, agreed to it. Today, there is so much going on at the farm – changes in my work life, chores, book negotiations, lambing – she felt guilty about going. But this is the very time to go, I said, Leave this behind, turn you back on it,  find you joy in learning who you are, where you come from, where you want to go. Come back and tell me about it. I will be here.

I thought today that my whole life is getting on that plane in the morning, and it feels like that, but that would not be love, that is something else, a place I have left behind, not a destination.

I will not be lonely, I have come from the experience of loneliness to aloneness, that is very much what we are about. Geography has little to do with true love. I look forward to this feeling, this experience, it will be a great measure of how far we both have come, of where we are. Loneliness was a terrible state for me, aloneness is a powerful spiritual experience, a place I have always longed and worked to be.

Maria I wish you a great journey, joy and fulfillment, presence. You will bathe in the most creative waters, come back bursting and sparkling with wonderful ideas and, generously and gently and graciously as always, you will return them to the world, you are such a gift to so many people.