A Broken Home or an Extension of Love

Recently, the following messages were shared in one of our chat groups:

Anne: I chose to take care of the children! Bas will be there too!

To which Corrien responded:

Corrien: It’s truly beautiful how this can unfold. The way you mirror this for me as well.

Yesterday I went with my ex (Lisa’s dad), his girlfriend, and her two daughters to watch Lisa’s second gymnastics class.

I feel so happy and grateful that we were together and seemed like one big family. It was cozy, chaotic with three girls, and we laughed until we cried. Oh, and so much more…

I feel so grateful that this is possible, that it exists, and that it could happen. My child enjoying her bonus mom, and she enjoying my child. She even bought a big stuffed bunny for Lisa. How special and loving. Another person who loves her so dearly. Her children who see Lisa as their little sister. One of them even said, “I’m your stepsister.” And Lisa said: “Step makes me sad. You’re my sister.”

Well… that just melts me. So much love. And that’s what was there yesterday—love and being—and it touches me deeply.

Thank you, Bas and Anne, for sharing this process with us, with me, because it makes me aware of the sadness of a “broken” family, while we show our children how it can also be—from love and strength… beyond ourselves.

What power (and that = love) 😢❤️❤️❤️

I found it brilliant, and I responded with:

Paul: This is the way it’s supposed to be. What we call a broken family is really only Love doing its best to expand. ❤️

I know that when relationships end, it usually doesn’t feel like Love and can be very painful. And yet, Love continues to work its quiet magic throughout the entire process. Sometimes quickly and sometimes very slowly, and still, it never stops—whether we are aware of it or not.

According to ACIM, relationships never end, although their form can and will change over time. Love is not form but content. So what does that really mean? Here is a partial list of different forms… bodies, feelings, emotions, various relationships like couples, families, marriage, business, friendships. Nature, the world, politics, things, places, stories… the list goes on, almost endlessly. Although Love is none of these things, it inhabits them all. Forever unlimited, Love continues to follow its only law, which is to extend.

Love can’t be taught or explained, but it can be experienced and is constantly revealed.

I’ll end with another quote from ACIM: “When you want only Love, you will see nothing else.”

Let’s live there.

I shared this article with the people mentioned in it, and this was their response…

Bas: “Thank you, Paul. It touches me deeply. I feel both moved and truly grateful. And I feel the need to share a few words.

I recognize (slowly and often with a lot of resistance, but with growing willingness) how what we often call ‘broken’ is, in truth, not the absence of love, but an invitation to see love beyond all of this. Your message reflects that so clearly, and I can feel how it resonates in my own process.

I’m experiencing that love can expand—even when forms change. And that our children can be surrounded by more love, not less. What once felt like loss is transforming into something bigger, softer, more truthful, and more powerful. I’m experiencing that love is not defined by roles or labels. It simply is.

Thank you for sharing this. It reminds me again that healing is not about fixing what is broken, but about recognizing that love was never truly gone.

I am truly grateful for this and couldn’t have done this without the Course.

I completely agree—let’s live there!”

Anne: “What I experience is that the form of the relationship has changed, but not the content.

Where I first sought love in closeness and in the roles we played for each other, I’m now learning that love doesn’t depend on that.

Through the distance and the change of form, I’m invited to go inward and recognize the love within myself. And it is precisely in this that I experience more space emerging—for gentleness, for honesty, and for real connection.

I’m beginning to see that love isn’t something that arises or disappears between two people, but something that is always there. When I no longer lose myself in expectations or old patterns, I can let that love flow more freely—toward myself and therefore naturally toward the other person.

In that sense, it doesn’t feel like less love, but like an expansion of it.

As if the relationship, in a different form, brings me closer to the truth of love than before.”