Love Thyself

“And if I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself?”

I had read quotes about self-love many, many times before. They never spoke to me that much. I remember how in my twenties Louise Hay was always talking about how important it is to love yourself, all of you. I remember the affirmations you were supposed to do in front of the mirror. I usually skipped those and if I did do them, I could never really get into it, if you know what I mean. In my mind loving myself was never a thing I needed to work on. I knew my worth. I had self-respect. I was confident in who I was and what I could do. Surely that meant that I loved myself, so no need to fix anything if nothing was broken.

It was only when depression hit me like a ton of bricks and I was on my knees in the pitch dark bottom of what felt like a bottomless pit, because I’d sink deeper and deeper every time I thought it wasn’t possible to, that one day I realized it. It wasn’t a big aha-moment. It was more of a whisper. My soul whispered it to me so softly. I heard it somewhere in the back of my mind but didn’t pay much attention to it. It did not register until the words came out of my mouth during a conversation I had with a cousin of mine. I said it out loud: “I don’t think I love myself. I honestly think I have no love for myself.” The truth and depth of what this meant were not yet clear to me but I had uncovered a secret so big and so dark even I didn’t know I was keeping it.

In the weeks after it slowly dawned on me. All this time I had confused being self-confident and having self-esteem with self-love. For as long as I can remember I always considered myself smart, strong, and capable. But did I love myself? What did loving myself look like, what did that feel like? The fact that I was asking myself these questions, and the fact that I did not readily know how to answer them, made it obvious I had no clue what self-love even meant. The crazy thing is we all sing along to love songs, watch romantic movies, read stories and poetry about love so we all know about love in relation to others but rarely do songs, movies, novels and poetry cover the concept of love in relation to oneself.

So how does one love oneself? How was I supposed to love myself? How?? The only way I could think of to get closer to the answer was to examine the way I loved others. My two children immediately came to mind. I knew I loved them. For them I felt that pure, unconditional and forever kind of love that wasn’t just a feeling but rather a verb, it was a way of being, a way of doing. I loved them by being as patient, kind, compassionate, understanding, uplifting, and nurturing as I could possibly be. Loving them meant keeping them in check when necessary and giving them the opportunity to do better. It meant accepting who they are without wanting them to be different, supporting them in their growth, guiding them, holding them, being proud of them, showing up, being there and doing my best. It also meant always staying open to learning new ways of parenting and becoming better for them and last but not least making sure they knew that nothing they ever did could make me stop loving them. Love was what I did. Love was who I was with and for them.

This beautiful awareness made it utterly and painfully clear that I wasn’t loving towards myself at all, and I couldn’t remember if I ever had been. In all honesty I had actually been pretty hard on myself. I was never satisfied with what I did or who I was. I always felt I could do more or be better, and so I never patted myself on the back or told myself I’d done a good job. Pride in my accomplishments was never there because whatever I did, it wasn’t that extraordinary, and therefor no need to make a fuss about nothing. I held myself to mistakes I made and found it hard to be understanding and kind and compassionate towards myself. Oooh yes, I was in dire need of some serious self-lovin!

But if you know what depression looks like, what it actually means… you know that having insights doesn’t do the job right away. Even though I intellectually grasped that for life to be good again I needed to (among other things) learn to love myself, it still took that fake bottom of the bottomless pit I was in to collapse even further before I eventually made a real and serious attempt to give myself that love I so freely and effortlessly gave to my children. To be honest, I did it when I had no other choice. Literally. The depression had to suck almost all the life energy out of me for me to succumb to the fact that learning to love myself for myself was the only way out.

And that’s also the thing, you see loving yourself has nothing to do with anyone but you. You don’t do it for your children, you don’t do it for your partner or your family, you do it for you. You do it because you are worthy of your own love.

You do it by choosing you. And so I chose me. All of me. And I get to choose me over and over again. I choose to forgive myself but also hold myself accountable. I choose to take responsibility for me. I choose to use discernment in all areas of my life, to trust and honour my intuition, to set boundaries and guard them. I choose to consciously live by my own standards and values, to be intentional about the choices I make. I choose to do my best to be OK when everything’s not OK, to give myself permission to feel whatever I am feeling and then give myself permission to feel better. I choose to hold space for myself when the going gets tough, to take time to relax, to make healthier choices. I choose to say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no. I choose to let go of that which is not mine to carry and to release beliefs, thoughts, things and people that do not serve me.

Now just to be clear, self-love and choosing you isn’t about putting yourself first at the expense of others. It’s not about being selfish and arrogant. It’s not about thinking you’re better than anybody else or putting others down and it’s not about ‘only looking out for number one’. To me self-love is about seeing yourself for who you truly are. It’s about accepting your dark sides while embracing your light. It’s about being committed to growth, about knowing your worth regardless of status, achievements or material possessions. It’s about knowing who you are regardless of what anybody else thinks. It’s about valuing yourself even when others don’t. It’s about teaching people how to treat you by how you treat yourself. It’s about being kind and compassionate with yourself. It’s about the ability to receive as well as to give and doing both equally.

It’s not easy. It’s not. It really isn’t. It’s an every-single-day-never-ending-kinda-process because it just doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to keep choosing myself even when it’s hard and I’m scared and don’t have the strength and energy to, and even when I know that choosing me, that loving me, will cost me relationships and spaces and circles. Like I said, it’s not easy but Self-Love is the foundation for one of the most important relationships you will ever have… the relationship with yourself. And the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for all other relationships. So maybe give it a try. You’re worth it!