…that it is the basis for everything else in our lives. How we think of and treat ourselves has a direct impact on how we think of and treat everyone around us. The concept is simple, but the practice is not simple for us all.
We are born with the most pure self-love, having no environmental stimulus yet, and no other model than what exists in our own hearts from the time of conception. We come into this physical world knowing no other way than to love ourselves… it is evident in how children act. Babies are born with the instinct to cry in order to have their needs met. Children don’t question whether they’re “worth” the things they need; they simply cry out, or ask, for what they need.
But as we grow, and our brains develop, and the world around us begins to have an impact, we are changed. This is life, and it is beautiful even when it’s challenging. I don’t recall exactly when I learned that my own needs weren’t as important as others’, but it was early on. A lesson taught to me by my own mother. I’m sure she didn’t intend for that to be the lesson – who would? But she could only teach what she herself knew, and she had also learned that lesson early on in her own life. I sometimes contemplate why she is the way she is, and now that I am an adult, it is helpful insofar as allowing me to see her as an “imperfect woman” also. So I imagine my mother, as a child, learning the lesson that she is not worthy of love, and I can then understand why she wasn’t able to teach me that I am worthy of love. Understanding doesn’t make it easy – but it does make it into something that can be forgiven and overcome.
I have been blessed in my life to have met so many impactful people… women specifically. Because in my case, I had been a woman without a proper female role model for many years, clear into adulthood. It took me until my early-thirties to realize that my main female role model didn’t have to be my mother. Duh, right? Lol We each learn at our own pace though, and when I learned that I could stop putting the weight of this on my mother, and instead move it to those who were able to show me and model for me self-love, my whole world changed. To those who have it, self-love is is not a weight at all – it is effortless. It is simply being. But for those of us who did not get to learn it early on, it is a practice. So every day, I thank God for the loving women I am surrounded by – most specifically those “Sisters” I’ve previously mentioned. And every day, I practice.
I practice because now I have my own children, and now I know that the love they have for themselves and everyone around them is the single most important thing they can possibly maintain in this rapidly changing world. Because self love is the basis for everything else in our lives.
Musings 
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