Beholding Love: The Ache Behind the Yodi App

It began, as most things do, not with a plan, but with an ache.

Not the kind of ache that keeps you awake at night — though I’ve known those too. This was quieter, humbler. The ache of bearing witness to something sacred unraveling. The ache of watching people — good, loving, trying people — lose their way not for lack of love, but for lack of the skills to sustain it. For decades at the PAIRS Foundation, we’ve walked with them. Veterans struggling to reconnect with their families after war. Couples silently drifting in homes full of noise. Young people unsure how to be known without losing themselves.

Founded in 1983, PAIRS was born from the heartwork of Lori Heyman Gordon, who believed that love should not be left to chance. That intimacy — real, lasting intimacy — could be taught. That connection was not a gift for the lucky few, but a skill we could all learn. And for forty years, we’ve done just that — through workshops, curricula, and conversations that change lives.

But something changed.

The world changed.

We found ourselves in a time where people were more digitally connected and emotionally disconnected than ever before. Where attention was fractured and tenderness felt like a luxury. And then — as if on cue — came the isolation of a global pandemic, pressing us even further into ourselves, into our screens, into the safe but sterile boxes of survival.

We asked ourselves: How do we carry this sacred inheritance — the decades of work helping people rediscover one another — into the digital present?

Enter Yodi.

Yodi didn’t arrive fully formed. It emerged from silence, like a voice whispering, There’s still more to give. A nudge to reimagine how we offer hope, healing, and human skills in a format that fits the pace and pulse of our time.

It was an act of hope — but it was also a leap of faith. And that leap was made possible thanks to the vision and generosity of the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation, and the fierce, poetic clarity of its founder, Elizabeth Koch.

Elizabeth introduced us to the idea of the Perception Box — the notion that every one of us moves through the world shaped by filters, stories, wounds, and interpretations we didn’t consciously choose. We don’t just see the world — we see our version of it, boxed in by the invisible architecture of experience. It’s only by recognizing that box, by seeing that we are seeing, that we can begin to shift. To connect. To heal.

That insight cracked something open for us. It gave language to what we’d sensed all along: that most people aren’t unwilling to love — they’re just stuck inside patterns that keep them from reaching one another. And so Yodi became not just an app, but a gentle companion, inviting people to step outside their boxes, to practice a new kind of seeing — of themselves, of others, of what’s possible in love.

With Yodi, we didn’t want to create another digital distraction. We wanted to create a doorway. A way for someone — anyone — to pause, breathe, and learn to speak from the heart. To listen without defense. To reconnect with the simple, sacred rhythms of appreciation, curiosity, empathy, and confiding.

The name is playful by design. Approachable. Human. Because what we’re offering is not a solution, but a companion — a friendly guide toward building relationships worth coming home to. In the quiet moments. In the hard conversations. In the places where words once failed.

And something extraordinary began to happen.

Word spread — not through ads or algorithms, but through longing. And today, more than 200,000 people across over 150 countries and territories have downloaded Yodi. From living rooms in Lagos to cafés in Paris. From quiet walks in Seoul to subway rides in New York. Proof that the longing for love, for connection, for the courage to be seen — is as universal as breath.

And yes, it is still — and always — an act of hope.

Hope that our perception boxes can be softened by empathy. That emotional literacy can be democratized. That what we once taught in rooms filled with chairs and coffee cups can now be practiced anywhere a phone can go. That someone sitting alone in the middle of the night might find, through Yodi, not a fix — but a way forward.

The app is free. Love never is. It costs presence, practice, humility. But what Yodi offers is a path — imperfect, patient, and always open.

Like love itself.