For as far back as I can remember, my mother has never been one to gives hugs and kisses or say “I love you.” While almost all of the other mothers I have met are warm and loving, mine dislikes being touched or getting in touch with her feelings.

Then there is my closest, truest friend whom I met my sophomore year of high school. She is a lot like my mother in the way that she doesn’t often get in touch with her feelings. It was about six months after we first became friends that she gave me a hug, even though I had hugged her several times before. The next one I got would be months later. Then maybe a year after we had become friends she said “I love you” for the first time to me. Those verbalizations were also rare.

So of course I had ridiculous and questionable thoughts like “do they really love me?” “This person always hugs me and says I love you, they must love me more.” But there is something terribly wrong with these assertions.

Maybe my mother never says, “I love you,” but when it comes to defending my words or actions to people who were trying to drag me down, she always defends me. When it comes to disciplining my wrong doings, or giving me constructive criticism or a reality check when my concerns get small-minded and petty, she never misses a beat. Maybe my mother doesn’t hug me, but that doesn’t mean she is a bad mother. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me. Because driving me all over even though she’s tired and there is no benefit for her is love. Buying me my necessities and sacrificing the little money she has and could be using for herself is love.

In the past year, my friend has gotten so much better at expressing herself and gives me frequent hugs and says “I love you” at the end of our every phone call from college, even when I don’t. But even without that, I would still know that she loves me. Because whenever I truly need a listening ear or am going crazy with family issues, or any issues, she never fails to support me. No matter what other stuff she has going on or how busy she is, she is always there for me. One time she heard that I had a really hard night the day before so she came to my house to sleep over. We didn’t talk about what had happened, she didn’t even say that was the reason she came over, but I knew it was. Because just her presence, attention and support says “I love you” a thousand times over.

What convinced me more of this is something that happened recently. I recently got a belated birthday card from somebody who has bullied me since I was a little girl. Over the years, she has switched from acting nice to me in the fake-est way one day and patronizing me and insulting me and those close to me with harsh, angry words and hateful bitterness the next. In the birthday card she put $50 and underlined “I love you” three times.

The lesson is that although the birthday card said “I love you” explicitly, I could tell it was far from genuine. This person had bullied me all my life and had never shown with actions that she truly loves me.

A few days after, my closest friend sent me a text saying that she and my other friend whom she was visiting at college had tried to FaceTime me the night before but it didn’t work and they would try again tonight. My friend had not explicitly said, “I love you” in the text she sent me, but she and my other close friend had thought of me and wanted to make time for me during their time together. That is love. Effort, time and sacrifice equals love. Words and actions can help to express it, but they don’t mean everything.

So if there are those people in your life who make you unsure that they actually love you because they don’t say it, look at their actions and think again.