Do you love yourself?
Like unconditionally love yourself?
Like, it doesn't matter if you shower or not? Or if you go to the gym or don't? Or if you have a clean or messy house? Or if you feed your family fast food more days than not?
Do you have the kind of love for yourself that doesn't change based on expectation, success, or failure?
If you do... how do you?
How did you get there?
How do you stay there?
What do you do in a world that is so harsh and so demanding and so judgmental to make sure you love yourself?
Please PLEASE share.
It's been like a year since you wrote this.
ReplyDeleteI have no answers for you.
Your questions made me cry.
Can I love myself when my face is breaking out? When my house is a disaster? When my kids are hungry and whining and ungrateful and I'm too tired to deal with it?
Can I love myself when I'm *still* having weird triggers even after years of therapy and God-knows how much self-work?
I don't know. I think I can.
I know I can at least acknowledge and feel that God loves me unconditionally through all of that. He knows what's really going on even when I don't. He know why some things are scary, why some things are hard, why things go the way they go.
He gets it. And He loves me. So even if I can't quite really actually truly mean it when I give myself that "Hey, your face breaks out like a teenager for a whole week every month but you're still awesome!" pep-talk, I can get through the day with a smile that is sometimes -- no, often!-- genuine. ;)
So I guess I can unconditionally accept that I am so totally not going to be able to love myself unconditionally -- and I'm okay with that. Maybe the next step will be a little closer to what we're hoping for.
Hugs, Alice, I love your guts.
I love this. "I can unconditionally accept the I am so totally not going to be able to love myself unconditionally". I love it because it makes me think and it makes me feel all the feels. I don't know if I am okay with accepting that I will never master this because OH HOW I WANT TO, but maybe it's the truth, simple truth! So I am going to think about this because I love it!
Delete