Storge Love (The Love that Holds Us)

We’ve spent this month exploring the four types of love—eros (spark), philia (friendship), agape (big-hearted care), and today, our finale: storge.

Storge (STOR-jay) is the love that doesn’t usually announce itself. It’s the steady kind. The “I’m here” kind. The love that grows quietly through repetition—through lunches packed, rides given, stories reread, inside jokes that never get old.

It’s the love that holds.

See

This kind of love is what mothers know best but isn’t talked about much when we talk about love. It is the love of parents for children. It is described as the most natural of loves. Natural in that it’s present without corrosion. It’s emoted because we can’t help ourselves, and it pays the least attention to whether the person is worthy of love.

The Cradle by Berthe Morisot

Storge is often invisible because it’s so woven into the fabric of our days.

5 Umezebi Street, New Haven, Enugu, 2012, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Gardner (Cassatt) Held by His Mother by Mary Cassatt

I love the minimalism of this portrait. There is enough there for us to clearly understand what we are seeing but it also communicates her exhaustion and the blurred definition of them as separate beings. They literally become one form.

Mothering young children felt a lot like this to me and I didn't feel very good at it. It was an endless loop of feeding, changing, waking, napping, packing, and predicting on repeat. Those days were my whole universe. Inside that exhaustion was awe. They were these small, perfect people, and I couldn’t believe they were mine. I wanted to protect them, to guide them gently, to be the safe place they returned to. They amazed me in ways I didn’t have words for yet.

As they grew, my love didn’t stay the same. It grew stretching to meet each new version of them. I love watching them move through the world now, carrying those younger insecurities and early experiences I remember so clearly. I see the whole arc: the tender beginnings, the hard days, the brave tries, the becoming. Maybe this is one of the quiet miracles of family love: our sons trust us with the whole story of their lives. Not just the highlight reel, the full, honest, complicated story and that we love them all the more for it.

The Banjo Lesson is an 1893, Henry Ossawa Tanner​

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Untitled (Woman and daughter with makeup) from Kitchen Table Series, Carrie Mae Weems

In 1989, Carrie Mae Weems began setting up her camera every day in her kitchen, in front of a simple wooden table illuminated by a single overhead light. And from that table, a fictional life unfolds, with Weems playing the lead role. “The Kitchen Table Series” is in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

A child's love for a parent starts as admiration and trust and over a lifetime might be reflected back as the "I'm here", ordinary kind. Artist and educator, Kari Hagen created these tender photographs as her parents were in their last days. She refers to holding their hand(s) as evoking a sense of home. She is the young child again feeling a sense of protection and yet it is her presence, her love, that is felt by them.

Untitled, 2023, Kari Hagen

Untitled, 2023, Kari Hagen

Say

A few questions to sit with:

• Where in my life is love showing up as steadiness instead of fireworks?
• Who has loved me through routine—without needing credit?
• What relationships feel like a “soft place to land”?
• How do I show love when I’m tired, busy, or distracted?
• How has my love for my children or parents changed over time?

If you want to share storge out loud this week, try a simple sentence:

“I notice how you show up. Thank you.”

Do

This week, look for storge in the ordinary.

• A worn spot on the couch where someone always sits
• A text thread that’s mostly logistics… and somehow still feels like home
• The way a pet waits at the door, certain you’ll return
• A neighbor who notices when your lights don’t come on

Make a “Proof of Love” Sketch

On a page, draw a simple map of your week (seven boxes, one for each day). In each box, add one tiny symbol of steady love you noticed:

• a dot for a check-in
• a line for a walk together
• a heart for a kind word
• a paw print for a loyal companion

By the end of the week, you’ll have a quiet constellation.

A gentle finale

If eros is the spark and agape is the wide sky, storge is the roots. It’s not always glamorous—but it’s what makes growth possible.

As we close this month of love, I hope you notice the steady hands in your life—including your own.

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Yours in wonder,

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