Self-love

You know, I honestly thought I knew what self-love was all about. Boy oh boy, was I wrong.

This past week, my work had a wellness challenge where we had options of either meditating with self-love affirmations or doing yoga with self-love affirmations. I chose meditation because I need to work on regulating my emotions more.

Well, per usual, I ended up releasing a lot of tears due to angst, misunderstandings, and frustrations. I’ve been listening to music all about self-empowerment, but meditating and repeating the same affirmation for at least 15 minutes hits differently. Who knew? Not this girl.

Sitting with myself, repeating affirmations like “I am worthy of love and respect” and “I am deserving of all good things” made me realize how much I didn’t believe this before hand. I believed that everyone else was worthy and deserving, but never myself. I subconsciously believed it, so my thoughts and actions showed up to align with those beliefs. In my head, I was confident so that means I love myself right? Well, yes, but it was the narcissist kind of love, not actual self-love that’s healing and compassionate and full of grace. It was a narcissistic love that led to very toxic traits and toxic situations. I was toxic, still am sometimes. Trying to disrupt my toxic ways has been really challenging, and sometimes I relapse because that’s all I knew and thought I deserved.

I was damaged goods, so I couldn’t possibly be worthy of respectful and healing love. There was even an exercise to envision being in front of my 2 year old self and just love on that inner child. I was guided gently into facing my inner child, something I’ve been avoiding to do. I cried because all I wanted to do was warn her of what was going to happen and that those instances will not define her. And then, I was guided into envisioning my teenage self. I felt so much pain because I watched her suffer alone, continuing to partake in risky behaviors when all she wanted was someone to see right through the behaviors and help her. I wish she had the words and courage to share her trauma rather than holding it in for many years, consuming herself of harmful thoughts.

And then, I started loving on my inner child, my younger self the way that I should’ve been loving on her all this time, the way I should’ve been loved on back then. It feels good. I feel seen finally.

Finally acknowledging the harmful thoughts about myself was gut wrenching AND a nice release. Now that I know what I’m doing, I can do better. I can choose better. I can demand respect AND respect myself or rather I can respect myself AND demand respect. I can walk away when a situation doesn’t do anything for me anymore. I come first. Me. I am my first priority.

I am more than enough. I am my own best friend. I would never talk to my best friend the way I talk to myself, so I need to make some shifts. I promise to have more compassion for myself. I promise to be gentle with myself. I promise to forgive myself of past wrongdoings. I promise to give myself everything I need so that I don’t continue to long for co-dependency. And I promise to listen to myself more and no longer ignore my inner gut.

Whew. I already feel so much better writing that out. Someone hold me accountable to make sure I follow through?

To my 10-11 year old self, I see you and I hurt for you and I love you. We’re finally on the path of healing, baby girl.