By Phyllis Everette, CEO and Founder of Saffron Trust Women’s Foundation
“Mom, I left some Dove chocolate on the counter for you!” she called, already halfway down the hall, already leaning toward the next flight, the next beginning. She knows my sweet spot, I thought, smiling at the small kindness left behind. I imagined it later with Law & Order: me, the couch, the steady hum of sirens making sense of chaos for forty-six minutes at a time.
As the day unfolded, I stepped into my workspace and met the note pinned at eye level on my vision board—the one I cannot pretend not to see. It reads: “It’s spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.” I stood still and let the sentence do its work. If there were no spiritual poverty, I thought, loving without rules would be easy. Without the hollow places inside us, it would be natural to love one another right through our imperfect behaviors.
Loving without rules asks something fierce and tender of us. It requires private surrender. It asks us to loosen our white-knuckle grip on being right. To lay down grudges like stones. To catch our judgments midair and choose not to throw them. To unlearn the comforting stories that keep us separate and safe. And I’ll tell you the truth: some days, giving these things up feels like risking sight itself—as if the part of me that polices the world would rather lose her eyes than see differently. That inner officer loves her citation pad. She loves order. But she doesn’t always love the truth.
So I reached for the chocolate.
The foil yielded with a small metallic sigh, unfolding like a whisper. It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t thunder. It simply arrived in my hand, ordinary and shining, and something in me softened. I can only say it felt GINA—God-Inspired, Natural—as if grace had disguised herself in silver and sweetness. The tiny message inside was gentle and exact. Right there at my keyboard, a quiet operation began. Arteries I didn’t know were narrowed started to clear—paths clogged by old stories, hardened judgments, and the slow buildup of fear. Darkness met light again, and they recognized one another.
Sometimes the heart breaks open not from thunder, but from foil.
“One soul at a time, starting with my own,” I heard myself say—my own voice returning like a promise I’d forgotten. Because that’s the only way I know how to love without rules: begin here. Let the healing start with me. Let me be the place where old vows dissolve—the ones pledging loyalty to despair, scarcity, suspicion. Let me be the place where mercy has a chair at the table. Where joy enters without knocking. Where pardon outruns punishment. Where love, not law, writes the first draft.
I thought of my daughter, Mich—how she knows when to leave me a lift, how her care finds the precise door that needs opening. Thank you, Mich, for knowing my sweet spot, and more than that, for knowing when my heart needs a hand at its back. Having you in my life is no accident; it is a divine appointment kept in ordinary ways. It is friendship doing its quiet work, reminding me I am held, even when I forget to hold myself.
Then I thought of my sisters—blood sisters, chosen sisters, those woven into my life by time, trust, and truth. The women who have seen me undone and stayed. The ones who have answered midnight with soup, prayer, laughter, a playlist, a plan. The ones who don’t need me to be tidy to be loved. We rise when we love one another without rules, like trees joined underground by ancient roots, passing water and light when one of us stands in shadow. This is how we remain—not by being unbreakable, but by being bound together.
So I stood there, wrapper in hand, and chose—again—to live my way into new thinking, not think my way into new living. I chose humility over armor, honesty over masks. I chose to let love have the last word, even when the first words are messy. Order could wait. Tonight belonged to the part of me still learning how to be free.
We are all trying to make sense together. And maybe the sense is this: love without rules isn’t lawless; it is faithful. Faithful to the God-breathed goodness in each of us. Faithful to the truth that people are more than their worst moment. Faithful to the possibility that healing is already in the room, disguised as something small—a piece of foil, a note, a sister’s voice.
One soul at a time, starting with my own.