Self-love
February Monthly Theme: Self-Love
One of my favorite topics! My life has been a massive journey of remembering my worthiness, remembering that i have always been good enough, and a journey of finding that unconditional love for my self within my self.
I find that Self-Love is a big one for many and it shows up a lot with my clients and in the workshops/retreats i run with my partner Liam. I believe because this is an energy that i have been challenged with this for most of my life and have been consciously working through this challenge for many years, i am now in a space where i am able to share my story and hold space for others to remember their worthiness and to embrace self-love through different practices, tools, guidance and support.
I want to share a little about my journey into loving my self…
For most of my adolescence i struggled immensely with anxiety, especially social anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and lacking the will to live, i just didn’t want to be here and i didn’t know why. I felt very alone in my suffering and i thought there was something wrong with me, being a perfectionist i didn’t want to admit this “wrongness” to anyone so i kept my pain to myself, not knowing where to turn or who to turn to for help. I looked around at everyone else in the school grounds and saw them smiling, laughing and enjoying life, confident and surrounded by friends. Being an introvert, i thought i needed to be more extroverted in order to be happy, but speaking to others was absolutely petrifying to me, the fear of saying the wrong thing was terrifying and so i would overthink, over analyze and experience intense panic attacks when someone i didn’t know very well spoke to me. I would shut down and smile until it was all over. People thought i was weird, i thought i was weird, i thought there was something wrong with me, and there began the journey to “fixing” my self. This only took me so far, part of my journey was remembering who i truly am, and realizing there was nothing to fix, i was not broken. What i was in need of was self-acceptance, self-love, and deep compassion.
Do you resonate with any of this?
Have you ever or do you still feel like you’re broken? Unworthy? Not good enough?
Can you take a moment now to shift into your heart space and feel compassion for yourself...
Self-love is a journey, sometimes we can shift in an instant and start loving all over ourselves now, and sometimes it takes a little longer. For myself it took years, and now that i am where i am i reflect on my journey and i love all of it, even the darkest parts that i never thought i could accept about myself, i love all of it, i appreciate all of it because it was all part of my process, and it all supported and guided me to this space here and now where i experience more love for my self than i ever have.
In my recent post Manifestation, i shared about what can prevent you from creating the life you say you want to be experiencing now, the trauma, suppressed emotions, stress, lack of gratitude, this is also relevant for self-love, i recommend having a read of that post to gain some other insights that may be beneficial to you. Trauma and suppressed emotions played a huge part in preventing me from loving and accepting myself, from embracing the truth of who i am. I never allowed myself to fully feel anything, i didn’t feel like i had the right to. When i found breathwork i finally gave myself permission to feel, this supported TREMENDOUS release of suppressed/repressed emotions, traumas, stress, feelings of unworthiness, and it gave me a glimpse of who i truly am. Through breathwork i began the journey of remembrance.
When we start to peel back the layers by doing deep internal work, when we go into the shadows and shine our light, we see what we are not, we see that we are not our traumas, we are not the darkness we are experiencing. This takes a lot of courage to go into the darkness, there’s this fear around not being able to get back out, like the darkness will consume us and become us, and we won’t survive. This was my experience and for many of my clients as well.
I share this with you to activate the remembrance who you truly are, to plant the seed that you are not the darkness, you are not your trauma… and if you’re not the darkness, perhaps you’re the LIGHT after all… You’re the light that will guide you home, and this i truly believe to be true.
Self-love will look very different for each one of us, we are all unique beings and this practice of self-love is about exploring and finding what feels loving to you. Many of times we place expectations on ourselves. What self-love looks like, what you need to do every single day, and if you miss a day, you’ve failed. This is not the case, this pressure hinders the process and is not an act of self-love.
All of my life i have weighed myself down with expectations, conscious and unconscious, and pressured myself to such a detrimental level. I would tell myself i needed to have a routine and follow this routine exactly otherwise i would have a terrible day, lose motivation and go back into experience the anxiety and depression. What i didn’t realize was that the expectations and pressure was sending me back into these states. The past couple of years have been a journey of releasing expectations and pressure not only on myself but the expectations and pressures i have been holding on others. This has been one of the greatest acts of self-love i have gifted myself.
I was always very structured and felt i needed routine to thrive, since my pregnancy i experienced deep surrender and i began to wake up each day and feel into that day and ask “What do i feel like doing today? What is for my highest good today?”, and that’s where the expectations began to dissolve. The more i practiced this, the easier it became, and what started to happen is that the things i felt i HAD to do in order to have a good day, they came through as a “I feel like doing this today, i am going to honour myself, and do this now”, and other days when i didn’t feel like doing that thing i was completely okay with it. My life began to flow with much more ease, and i began to enjoy life for the first time ever! I found the will to live.
This month i invite you to begin the journey of self-love or to deepen your journey of self-love if you have already begun.
I invite you to go within and ask yourself “What expectations/pressures do i hold on myself?”, write it all down and notice the heaviness these create on your being, your mind, body and soul.
I invite you to commit to practicing self-love everyday for this month and to just notice how that feel for you. Each morning when you wake up, ask yourself “What is one thing i can do today for me?”, write it down and make the conscious choice to do this for you!
Maybe it’s just taking a moment to look in the mirror and say “i love you"
Maybe it’s going out in nature and having some time just for you…
Maybe it’s taking yourself out for a coffee, having a ceremonial cacao, getting yourself that new outfit you’ve been thinking of constantly…
It could be practicing yoga or meditation…
These are just some ideas/examples of what i do. What i want to encourage you to do is to go within and ask yourself “What do i truly want for myself today? What is for my highest good today?”, and don’t be surprised if sometimes what you need most is to let yourself feel like crap, if what you need is to spend the day in bed feeling depressed, or to just cry for hours, if you need a lazy day, or whatever it is.
When i first became pregnant, i dropped into one of the deepest waves of depression for that entire first trimester, and it was the first time i let myself fully feel it, and WOW was that transformational!
It’s now been almost 2 years and i have not experienced that kind of depression since, and i believe it’s because i stopped trying to fix it or bypass it, i just let myself feel. Now when there’s challenging emotions and energies arising for me, i let myself feel it then and there and it moves through, it doesn’t linger, sometimes it take some days or a couple of weeks, but it moves and i allow the space for it to be here, without judgement or criticism, i have compassion and love for my self and my experience.
I hope you enjoyed this post. My intention for this post is that it sparks something in you and provides exactly what you needed to receive at this time in your journey to deeper self-love. Thank you for being here. Much love.