What if love was never meant to be earned, just allowed?

In this powerful and tender episode of More Human, More Kind, Heather Hester invites you to examine the stories you carry about love, especially the ones you learned before you even had the words to question them. Through science, psychology, and personal reflection, she explores how childhood attachment patterns shape our adult definitions of love and how to rewrite those stories with compassion, curiosity, and conscious parenting.

Whether you're an LGBTQ+ ally, a parent trying to raise emotionally healthy kids, or someone healing from conditional or weaponized love, this episode is an invitation to stop performing for love and start remembering what real, safe, expansive love actually feels like.

• Understand how your earliest relationships shaped your attachment style and love blueprint
• Learn how to identify the old stories that tell you love requires sacrifice, silence, or suffering
• Get practical tools to begin repairing your relationship with love through journaling, micro-moments of self-compassion, and nervous system care
• Reflect on how to model secure, respectful, and inclusive love for yourself, your children, and the people you care about most

Many of us, especially LGBTQ+ individuals and parents, were taught that love means staying no matter the cost. But love that asks you to disappear isn’t love. It’s survival.

Real love makes room for truth, safety, and freedom and when we unlearn fear-based attachment, we become better allies, better parents, and more whole humans.

Try This Journaling Prompt:

"The future version of me will thank me for..."

or

"I'm learning to speak to myself like..."

Write it. Read it aloud. Let it be your new evidence of love.

Want to Go Deeper?

Join Heather every Friday on Substack for live guided journaling sessions and Q&A: a soft, brave space to reconnect with your heart, especially before the holidays. MoreHumanMoreKind.com

Press play now to begin unlearning fear-based love and to remember what it feels like to be held without condition.

Resource Spotlight

Book: All About Love by bell hooks — foundational wisdom on redefining love as an active choice.

Research: Dr. Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (HarperCollins, 2011).

Therapy Resource: Attachment Theory in Practice by Dr. Sue Johnson — how early bonding shapes our adult relationships.

Study: Barbara Fredrickson, “Love 2.0” (University of North Carolina, 2013) — the science of micro-moments of love.

Book: How We Love by Milan & Kay Yerkovich

Podcast Episode: “Healing the Inner Child” – Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

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At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ+ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and foster courageous, compassionate connection.

If you’re in the thick of parenting, allyship, or pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heart-warming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in—I see you. And I’m so glad you’re part of this journey.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast and space where a mom and mental health advocate offers guidance on parenting with empathy, inclusion, and open-minded allyship, fostering growth, healing, and empowerment within the LGBTQ community—including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals—while addressing grief, boundaries, education, diversity, human rights, gender identity, sexual orientation, social justice, and the power of human kindness through a lens of ally support and community engagement.

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