Self-love is a regular term in our home and something I am extremely passionate about. Personally, it is at the top of my list when it comes to parenting, and life in general. My biggest wish is self love for all, it brings peace, community, and independence all at the same time. I struggled with self love until later years, so I try to have it floating all over my children's world for them to become familiar with. I stress the importance of self love and how it requires an ongoing effort through out life. I feel like it is the most important gift I can give them. It's an umbrella to house all the other good stuff like self respect, respect for others, empathy, sensitivity, confidence, integrity, and so much more. We talk about knowing yourself and loving yourself. Knowing what you want and what you do not. We talk about how things are constantly changing. The weather changes, the seasons change, the world changes, and we change as individuals. It is important to keep track of who you are and who you are becoming and what parts of you have broken away to make room for growth.
I feel strongly that almost everything negative in life (besides things completely out of our control) can be linked to lack of self love or improved with a deeper self love. Big things like addiction and keeping people in your life who bring negativity. Smaller, but still important things like self doubt and the way we react to stress or choose to create drama instead of resolution. If you put work into loving yourself deeper, you would not be so quick to allow these things for yourself. You wouldn't feel the need for other people to assist in your happiness. You would not be afraid to only do the things you want to do. You would feel happy and whole.
I've been delighted to see that the term self love has made its way into classrooms, books, and social media. What concerns me, is that it is becoming a "thing" where many people are missing the mark. I think self love is often being mistaken for self care. Although self care is important and shows love for yourself it is not the same act as self love. Getting our hair and nails done is not self love. It is surface level self care. You could decide to never get your hair and nails done again and love yourself deeply, finding complete contentment in not doing these things anymore. Self love is loving yourself even without the hair done and make up on. Feeling love about who you are at your core. There is absolutely nothing wrong with some extra self care, I'll be partaking in some next week and enjoying every minute of it, but it is important to understand (especially for our daughters) that self love is internal. It is the voice in your mind and the feeling in your heart.
Weight can be a tricky one as well. It takes self care to keep our bodies in shape and it takes self love to love ourselves even when we are unhappy with our weight. Just that form of self care alone can be so hard to do for some reason. I am currently pushing myself with the motto of "love yourself enough to use more self care with your weight". Time to shed the lingering pounds that have become to comfortable hanging out. I am not happy with the extra weight, but I still love who I am at my core, the self. I can't say it isn't tempting at times to fell negative towards myself about it, but I choose to rise above that and keep loving.
Love yourself enough to stop allowing yourself to be a victim of life. Shitty things happen to all of us. Although I know for a fact that it can feel like certain things are more intense for you than others, that is simply not the case. Death happens and it's devastating, break ups and divorce happen and it's difficult and scary, but we all have the ability to cope in our own ways and move forward, learning to love the new parts of ourselves that these tough situations bring about. Huge changes occur and they take all of our energy and change all of our plans, love yourself enough to embrace it and see where it is leading you. Love yourself enough to let go of things and people that do not serve you. That can initially sound stuck up, but it is not. If there is something or someone in your life that does not serve you with something positive, they are taking up space. Love yourself enough to let them go. Love yourself enough not to react to things that do not deserve your energy and attention. Accepting and becoming fluid with change and choosing not to react when it is the healthier choice brings peace. When you love yourself, you know that you deserve peace. Love yourself enough to stop viewing life as things happening to you.
We also have the glorification of busy these days. Please, I beg you, love yourself enough to only be as busy as you want to be. We are all busy in some form. Working, running a household, making time for hobbies, volunteer work, raising children (which may come with sports, parties, illnesses and other extracurricular activities), housework, errands, social life, these are all things that keep us busy. If allowing your kid to play soccer, baseball, AND take gymnastics and archery create a busyness that is causing stress, then don't do all those things. It really is that simple. The kids will be OK! They don't have to do everything. Maybe they could use some more down time too. Maybe it will bring them joy not to see mom or dad so stressed. Maybe they need more family movies and popcorn on the couch. If you love being on the go and it energizes you, by all means, do all the things, but if you find yourself complaining or even talking often about how busy you are and you are feeling victim to it, stop doing all the things! Do the things that bring you joy. There are always things to remove from your plate. I think we tend to feel obligated, but we need to stop that. Being busy doesn't make you more important or more valuable, we are literally all busy with something. Sometimes I am busy doing nothing. I am not available simply because I am busy doing nothing. Sometimes there is much more value in taking time do something quiet on your own, or taking time for meditation or binge watching some Netflix for a while. We must remind ourselves that if we feel too busy, we have the power (through self love) to change that.
Lastly, selfies are not self love. A selfie with no make up is not self love. A selfie is still surface level. Self love is internal and can and will present itself in your life when nurtured. A selfie is a selfie. It is a self taken photo of you that you want other people to see. If you're feeling fly, by all means, snap a selfie and post it. If you're digging yourself with no make up and you feel good about that, by all means, post it, but it's not #selflove. Self love is feeling great about being you and not worrying about that urge to show everyone. That's the wrong hashtag for the photo. I think I'd feel better about seeing #selflove on a photo of someone consuming organic vegetables.
We can all use more self love. It is amazing, when given the effort, how you can watch it seep into all aspects of your life and make things easier. I'm no expert, but I've had and continue to have my own personal journey with self love and it is the key to happiness and growth. In the end that is what matters most.
All the love (and self love),
Caffeine and Freckles
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