With me getting into a new relationship recently, I've been thinking about love and what it means a lot lately. 

And in doing so, I've come to learn multiple different things in what I understand love to be now, versus what I thought it was the first time I met it in 2010. 

So with love being one of the biggest lessons I've learned (and will never stop learning about) in the last six years, I decided to create a SS/17 collection about it called Love Hurts, Love Heals, Love Grows.

 Love Hurts

When I say 'Love Hurts', I feel like that's something we can all agree on, either now or at some prior point in time.

Me personally, I first found out that love hurts back in 2010.

You see, there was this girl that I was absolutely crazy about. I was so crazy about her, that I used to think about her during class, text her to see if she was doing okay, and overall just wanted to be with her all the time. I would of never admitted it then, but its safe to say that I was obsessed with this girl. 

I had the hots for this girl, but unfortunately, I was the only one whose feelings caught fire. And in the end I was the only one to get burned. 

While I was all about her and thought she was all about me, she randomly shows up one day at church with a guy she called her boyfriend as if it was the most normal thing ever!

Now I kept my composure and pain inside when she introduced me to him, but dude when I tell you I was crushed, I was flatter then a fresh piece of paper type crushed! All that was running through my mind for days was 'how could she do this to me? Who is that guy?? When did that become her boyfriend?? WTF?!?' 

I was in love, confused, and hurt. 

But thankfully, I was able to turn all that pain into art, and created my biggest most powerful creation to date, the Heartbeat logo.

So when I say Love Hurts, I'm sure you can see why. Granted, I was head over heals for this girl and probably didn't see what was right in front of my face but that all plays as to why love hurts. 

More times then not, love hurts when you're young and inexperienced. Love hurts when you're head over heals and blinded by the red hot passion it brings. Love hurts when that person is all you can think about and all you want to be with and all you care about. Love hurts when you make someone your world and all of a sudden it disappears from you. Love hurts when it's brand new and then things start to go wrong and you don't know how to deal with it all, simply because you never knew love could feel this way...

I decided to represent Love Hurts by using a red French terry crewneck to stand for both the red hot passion that's felt in the beginning and the pain that's felt towards the end of love.

When you're in love, everything is all happy, colorful, cheery and bright eyed, but when things fall apart and the pain sets in, it's like the color drains from it all. Things are no longer colorful, but dull shades of grey, black and white. Your heart hurts and that's what lead me to make the Heartbeat logo black and white, to represent the lack of color that used to be there. 

Love Heals

While Love Hurts and can bring pain to the inexperienced, there's a positive side to it all, and that's that Love Heals. You see while love hurts and may leave scars over your heart, mind, body, and soul, it doesn't have to necessarily be an ever lasting thing. 

I've found out that when you decide to love yourself totally and completely, love heals all. 

When I fell in love with that girl, I was more in love with her then I was myself. I found happiness in her rather then in myself. I was soo in love with her that I was willing to extend myself to any and every point possible, even if I knew I was stretching myself thin. I didn't love myself, so I was basically setting myself up for failure, hurt, and pain whenever things went wrong, which they eventually did. 

But when I decided to learn to love myself, I began to heal. I began to see that I was where my happiness should come from. I began to give myself the respect I deserved. I stopped playing myself. I stopped offering myself up to people that weren't offering themselves to me. I learned to put myself first and to realize that it wasn't a selfish thing to do. I began to stop hating myself but instead to LOVE myself. I began to learn who I was and what I was worth. I learned to respect myself, and in turn demand that other people do as well. 

When I learned to love myself, I healed from the inside out. I saw myself as the jewel that I really was and internalized that feeling. From then on, it wasn't long until I started accepting all the things that I used to call 'flaws' and just took them as apart of who I am. When I learned to love myself, the old scars didn't get removed but instead, served as a reminder to continue to always love myself, no matter who or what comes along that may tell me to do otherwise. 

If you look at the design below, I chose the colors teal and purple to stand for the tranquil and peaceful outcome that comes from loving yourself. I feel like teal and purple blend really well together and the feeling provided from them is calming, strong, and wholesome, just like the healing you get from loving yourself. 

Now while loving yourself is worth it, but it isn't always easy so I chose black to represent the struggle that comes with it. Times may be dark but the light at the end of the tunnel is peaceful, calming, serene and illuminating to say the least! 

Love Grows

Now that I'm in a relationship, I've had the time to come face to face with the realization that Love Grows.

Upon seeing how I was different in my relationship now compared to my others, I realized that I wasn't the same person that I was before.

I realized that I had more patience. I was nicer. I was more accepting of people and their 'flaws', seeing that I have my own. I was telling myself 'yes' more as opposed to 'no'. I walked taller. I held my held higher. I ignored things that would of bothered me before. In essence, I GREW.

One of the best things about growing through loving myself is that all the hard work I put into it came back ten fold. 

Through getting into a new relationship, I realized that I had a LOT more love to give, and healthy love at that. I was more supportive, kind, loving, caring, and thoughtful. I found myself not as insecure as I used to be. I found myself not loving out of spite, but out of wanting to see my significant other do the best and be the best that they could be. The way I'm loving now is shockingly different from how I was loving before and I'm proud to say that!

Just like the quote says, love yourself first and everything will fall into place. Love yourself first and the world will be a much easier place to navigate through. Love yourself first and loving someone else will be that much easier and enjoyable.

I decided to represent Love Grows by using the vibrant pink to accent the calming teal used in the Love Heals color way. I feel as if after you heal, you have nothing left to do but grow stronger! The black is bold and reminiscent of the past, but conscious of the future. My goal was to have something that pops, and growth through love does just that.