Love yourself they say...

So you do the little extra things that make you feel good about yourself so you can muster the courage to look at your naked body in the mirror and vow to find the beauty in every flaw.

You start to set boundaries, learn to say no and stay in your pj’s all day without feeling guilty.

You start doing the things you’ve always wanted to try, you have adventures and take the risks you’ve always been too afraid to take. You visit places you’ve never been and try food you’ve never tasted.

You start reading books, writing, and learn to spend time alone until you actually enjoy it. You do all of this and thrive like you’ve never have before, all while believing that now you truly love yourself.

While those are noble achievements well deserving of praise and recognition, I’ve learned that loving yourself is a lot harder than that. And if you stop at loving yourself there, the cycle is sure to repeat itself.

True love for yourself requires you to take an honest look at yourself, at the things that trigger you, at the things that make you laugh and the things that make you cry.

It requires you to ask yourself why you need and want the things you say that you need or want from others. Yet, it requires you to dig even deeper for answers.

No longer satisfying yourself with, “Because I deserve it.’ Forcing you to realize that if you really believed you deserved the things you say you need and want. You wouldn’t have settled for less in the first place.

It requires you to look at your thoughts, your fears, and insecurities in a whole new light. Realizing that you have had a much bigger role to play in how you’ve been treated than you initially assumed.

True love of self forces you see that you were really just wanting to be soothed by the actions of others. That you really just wanted to wrap those fears, thoughts and insecurities into a blanket of comfort. Revealing the fact that you were never really fixing the problem in the first place.

Your eyes then start to open and you see things in a whole new light. As you accept that you were never truly ready to receive the love you thought you weren’t receiving. And the only thing you were open to receive was that blanket of comfort that kept your pain tucked inside.

It’s not until you dive deeper down the rabbit hole. Beyond the role of the victim or passing the blame to someone else. Where you dare to look under your own shadow; at the things that you don’t really want to see and actually face yourself.

Here is where your own darkness dwells and where the true source of all of your pain resides.

So diving deeply you jump within these dark and rough waters of your past. Reflecting back for your review of all of your fears, loses, rejection, betrayal, jealousy, resentment, and abandonment tossing and turning you about. You struggle to hold your tense head above the water with hope seeming far out of reach.

Then it happens all of a sudden and at the moment when you least expect it. You become tired of the fighting your past that‘s forcing you to swim against the current and decide to accept the past and the lessons it’s taught you.

You forgive yourself for carrying these burdens for so long and you decide to allow love to take you where you’re meant to be and you let go.

This is where true love of yourself comes to your rescue. Delicately holding you steady as the water below you calms. Then it gently floats you down to the river of peace and healing.

Where you remember your light and all of the beauty you have within. Where you remember who you are, accept who you are and finally truly love yourself once again.

You can learn to love yourself upon the surface, but true love of oneself is found much much deeper than most people want to go. But if you’re brave enough to venture into the deep, the treasure of true love of self will be yours to keep.