Maybe just like you, I was taught to look outside myself for love. For validation. For okayness.
To look for love in all the wrong places, if you will.
Truth is, when we’re young, we need the love to come from outside us and to fill us up. Second truth is, when we don’t or can’t get that, we compensate and accommodate and repudiate ourselves.
Basically, in order to think the world is safe, we “realize” that there is something wrong with us, not the them’s who should be caring for and loving on us.
Then we get perpetually caught in looking for love from others to fill up the love we didn’t get and to somehow let us know that we are okay as we are.
And for those of us/you who were raised in a cult or extremist situation, the contracting and limiting of our brains when they’re supposed to be developing and individualizing cements these behaviors in even more.
It’s a harsh, vicious, painful cycle.
It’s a cycle we no longer need.
It’s a cycle we can stop or at least limit.
When I learned to look for love in the right places – in safe, supportive relationships, like with my therapist; in my (made up) signs from the universe that everything is and I am okay, like my yellow birds; and most importantly, in my own heart, mind, soul, spirit, and body – life eased.
I eased.
I am easing more and more every day.
Learning to love ourselves – and to love ourselves First Most and Always – is not a simple path. It’s not an easy journey. It’s not an intuitive next step. It takes, again, support and sometimes guidance and the willingness to walk through the fire for yourself. It takes a level of determination to keep at it and keep loving on yourself and a wild amount of patience with yourself when you don’t get it as quickly as you want to or think you “should.”
It takes love and grace and the willingness to keep loving yourself even when it feels wrong or off or weird or selfish or….
But it’s so possible.
And it’s so amazing.
And it’s so worth it.
Ping me if you want to know some of the ways I got here or if you want companionship on your path.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most and Always!
Photo by Summer Day on nappy
