A Love That Evolves: A Birthday Reflection on Marriage, Memory & the Subconscious Heart
Today is my husband’s birthday, and as I sit in my usual spot with a warm cup of pumpkin tea cradled between my hands, I watch the wind carry a flurry of golden leaves across our yard—a swirling dance of color and light that feels almost orchestrated by something divine. There is a stillness in the air, the kind only autumn can bring, where life seems to pause long enough for the soul to speak. And today, my soul is speaking of love. Of him. Of us.
Birthdays have a way of making you think back—not just on the person being celebrated, but on every version of them you've had the honor of knowing. My husband is not the same man I first fell in love with—and I am not the same woman. And what a beautiful truth that is. Because real love, living love, does not stay still. It evolves with us. It grows through us. It asks us to fall in love over and over again, each time with a new, deeper version of the same soul.
I still remember the night I met him. The air was warm, the stars vivid and alive, and he was this quiet, soft-spoken Southern man with kind eyes and a gentle presence that immediately settled something inside me. We stayed up all night talking, watching as the sky shifted from moonlight to morning. With him, silence was never empty. Words never felt forced. Everything felt divinely timed. That night, I didn’t just meet a man—I met the beginning of a life I didn’t yet know I was praying for.
Our love began in laughter and simplicity—in spontaneous dinners, long car rides with the windows down, and dancing in the rain without a care for who was watching. I remember one evening when a storm rolled in, and instead of running for shelter, he looked at me with that boyish grin and held out his hand. We danced in the downpour like children set free, laughing as if time was standing still just for us. People watched, undoubtedly thinking we were crazy, but I knew we were simply alive—fully, beautifully alive in a moment that belonged only to us. Those early memories are stitched into my soul. They were the first layers of love—the kind that awaken you.
Then there were our Disney nights—the ones that made me believe in magic all over again. Hand in hand, we wandered beneath the glowing lights of Magic Kingdom and Epcot, pausing to watch fireworks shimmer across the water. We had a tradition of floating through the Mexico pavilion, where twilight skies and ancient temples surrounded us in peaceful wonder. On those nights there was no past and no future—just two souls completely present, choosing one another again and again in the soft glow of an endless evening. That was a sacred time. The time of becoming.
But love, when it’s true, doesn’t stay in its first form. It deepens. It matures. It calls you into moments that test not your emotions, but your devotion. Well before children, before life grew busier and fuller, there came a time when my grandmother became ill. And it was then that I saw my husband in an entirely new light. Without hesitation—and without ever needing to be asked—he stepped in to help care for her with such gentle reverence that it changed me. The way he held her hand, the way he helped lift her with care, the way he honored her life in those final days—it unlocked a new chamber of my heart. In those moments, the spark of young love transformed into a steady flame of unwavering faithfulness. I fell in love with him all over again—not because of what he said, or what he did for me—but for the kindness he poured out on someone I loved.
That is one of the greatest truths I’ve learned in loving him:
You do not fall in love once. You fall in love endlessly, as new parts of their soul are revealed.
And then, God wrote a new chapter. The day our son was born, I watched love take on a form so powerful it etched itself into my being forever. As I brought our child into the world, my husband was there—steady, ready, holding space with every ounce of love in his body. And when our baby entered this life, my husband caught him in his arms, his voice breaking as he shouted with awe, “I got him!” I can still hear those words. They echo inside me like a prayer answered. That was the moment love turned holy.
When our daughter was born, a new tenderness emerged in him that broke me open in the best way. To watch the man you love become the father your children needed—it is one of the greatest privileges of a woman’s life. It is a rebirth of love, a new falling, a new awakening. And yet, as powerful as those moments were, the small, ordinary things have become some of the most meaningful: toys scattered across the floor, his laughter with our children at the end of a long day, the way he still reaches for my hand when we pass each other in the kitchen. These are the marks of a life not just shared—but woven together.
Our love today is not a replica of our love from years ago. It is something greater. More textured. More sacred. We have loved each other in innocence, in tenderness, in passion, and in purpose. We have loved each other as dreamers and as parents. And every version has been real. Every version has mattered.
And this is where hypnosis becomes such a beautiful part of the story.
Because love—true love—lives not in our conscious mind, but in our subconscious. It is stored in the sounds, the touches, the memories that leave an imprint not on the brain, but on the heart. Hypnosis is simply the pathway back to those imprints. It allows us to reconnect with the emotional truths that time may have buried under routine, stress, or exhaustion. It reminds us of what is real. What is eternal. What remains untouched beneath the surface.
When life gets noisy, love is not lost—it’s just waiting to be remembered.
And so, on this day—on his birthday—I am reminded of every version of him I have had the privilege to love. The shy young man under the starlit sky. The playful partner dancing in the rain. The steady heart in the Mexico pavilion, whispering that life is beautiful when we slow down long enough to feel it. The man who held my grandmother’s hand. The father who held our son and daughter with tears streaming down his face. The husband who still, after all these years, chooses to love outwardly, fiercely, selflessly.
If my daughter one day finds a love like this—finds a Ben—I will know she has been blessed beyond measure. And if my son one day becomes this kind of man, I will know I have done my job as his mother.
Real love is not a fairytale—it is a living thing. It grows, transforms, stretches, softens, and strengthens over time. It is the greatest hypnosis of the heart—the beautiful trance of belonging, safety, devotion, and truth.
Today, I thank God for my husband. For the gift of his life. For the way loving him has shaped my soul. For the countless times I have fallen in love with him all over again.
And I know, with certainty, that there are many more versions of him I have yet to meet.
And I look forward to loving them all.
— Valerie Karen