Do you love yourself?
Be honest.
Do you love YOU?
All of you.
Your strengths and perceived weaknesses; your supposed flaws; your beauty inside and out?
Sit with the question for a moment.
I know I’d love to be able to shout out to the world that I love the real, unfiltered, anxious, kind, perfectionist, wee bit angry, uncomfortable, sometimes socially inept, introverted yet entertaining weirdo that naively just wants everyone to be happy me – but I can’t.
Not quite.
Yet.
My self-love is still loading.
The path to loving oneself is paved with good intentions. Our want to embrace self-love is unfortunately useless unless followed by action. I’ve read countless articles and blogs where the theme is “I woke up one day and just decided to love myself! It was that easy!”.
Um, nope. I call bull poop on that.
The art of self-love is, much like yoga, a practice. One that takes discipline, courage, bravery and above all else, time. It’s not a race to the finish line but a journey of discovery. It can be a voyage of uncertainty fraught with emotional highs and lows as you learn how to allow your love of self to envelope every part of you. Self-love must centre on the entire being in order to be an unequivocal love of self.
Taking action towards loving you can be whatever you need it to be AS LONG AS THAT ACTION IS NOT CENTRED ON CHANGING ANY PART OF YOU AS A CAVEAT TO LOVING YOURSELF. Change, in order to accept yourself, is nothing more than a bargaining tool and when that change falls short so will the love.
My path has been strewn with self-improvement and reflection books (The Gifts of Imperfection, I thought it was just me (but it isn’t) and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown to name a few), talk therapy (one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself!), and yoga; lots and lots of yoga both on and off the mat.
When I was putting together a playlist for my first class at Yogashala I stumbled across “I get to love you” by Ruelle. I listened. The chorus touched a nerve. My eyeballs began watering and I had an overwhelming sense of clarity and peace.
One look at you; my whole life falls in line
I prayed for you; before I called you mine
Oh I can’t believe it’s true, sometimes
Oh I can’t believe it’s true
I get to love you, it’s the best thing that I’ll ever do
I get to love you, it’s a promise I’m making to you
Whatever may come; your heart I will choose
Forever I’m yours, forever I do
I get to love you, I get to love you
While the song is not actually about loving yourself these words always fill my heart with the reminder that my self-love loading is so worth the effort.
Loving yourself really is the best thing that you’ll ever do for you because until you love and accept yourself can you ever really and truly love and accept others?
Whether you’re just starting out on your self-love journey, or have been travelling for awhile, know that I am right there with you.
By Cheryl Hendsbee