Epstein on Love and Lack

" By not fighting with his internal wounds, by not insisting on making them go away, by not recruiting everyone in his intimate life to save him from his feelings of abandonment, by simply resting with them the way we do in meditation, he could learn, as the Buddha did, that he already was the love he thought he lacked. ~ Mark Epstein, M.D.

This quote from Mark Epstein came up in my social media today. I find it very beautiful, and yet I wonder, what does it truly mean? I am the sort of person who doesn't just savor a quote; I often want to know the how and the why. And of course the question, "did Buddha even think about love?" comes to mind as well. Since the Buddha hardly mentions love, at least in the few sutras I have read. So why would Epstein, a psychotherapist who specializes in mindfulness and applications to therapy, put it in this way?
   I think that a better word for love might be "acceptance" and openness to whatever is emerging, as well as the ability to face something that might feel like a terrible void. If a person is not able to experience and accept their own inner sense of lack (whether through feeling of abandonment or whatever) then how can they extend love to others? Well, this is certainly my own struggle coming to the surface.
   But Epstein is not simply talking about a passive acceptance that comes from resignation, and that' why I think he might be more aptly talking about love, a sense of something positive that is expansive as well as inclusive. The closest analogy that I can come up with is that when I am in an open space such as nature; I am seeing myself not as this fixed identity but as part of something that is bigger and vaster. It enfolds all the experiences I am having without pushing me to identify with only one state of being. Most of all, the expansiveness of an open mind does not confine me to one particular story line about who I am. In this sense, I learn to abide in the sense of space within  rather than defining it as punishment, abandonment, decline, or any other negative social connotation that comes from discovering solitude within.