Exploring Values ~ SELF-LOVE
One evening I sat on the phone with my grandad, a very tall, brown man with an afro of gray hair. He spent many years working in the factories for Ford Motor Company and rented out properties he had bought, building his wealth. On the weekends he mowed their well-kept lawn, fixed the plumbing, worked on his car and visited his grandchildren. My grandad took pride in being a “self-made man’s man”. Masculinity was everything to him. We are talking about a man who refused to sleep on flowered bedsheets.
As we chatted on the phone, he began to open his heart to me, and unexpectedly he said: “You know, my father never told me he was proud of me, and I just felt like I was never good enough.”
His openness took me by surprise, and it explained a lot of what went on in the family. Suddenly, I could see a root for some of the patterns of lack and inadequacy perpetuated in our family. Unfortunately, I cannot remember exactly what I said in response, but I remember wanting to pour out all of the love he had missed and wondering if that would be enough to heal the pain inflicted (possibly unwittingly) by another. Even if I had done just that, he would have needed to be in a position to receive this truth and have the willingness to see it for himself in order for it to have any impact.
We allow the people in our lives a lot of freedom. We place our happiness, hopes and wellbeing in their hands and forget that our lives are still our responsibility. Perhaps my grandfather’s father could not tell him he was proud. Perhaps he did not know to tell him. Perhaps this pattern of silence reached back through generations of not knowing, not telling. Still, there is the forgotten truth that my great-grandfather’s opinion of him did not have a “real” effect on my grandfather’s adequacy or inner Divinity, as I prefer to call it. This inner Divinity is inherent. No human being gifted us with this light and it follows that no human being can take it away. We are all, at all times, adequate. We are all, at all times, Divine. The struggle comes from our forgetting and when we are reminded, we struggle to embrace it.
In my experience self-love finds its way in when one understands the following:
Self-love emerges from a place of unconditional self-acceptance. It is a deep appreciation for your individual quirkiness, your darkness as well as your bright light. Sometimes where there is light there is also shadow. When the shadow emerges, instead of inviting in hurtful thoughts, we must shine our light a little more, so that it can even warm the dark spaces. We must accept ourselves and take every opportunity to learn and grow.
Self-love comes knocking when we let go of the stories people tell about who we are as well as the stories we cultivated in order to create a false sense of belonging. Let those stories float away like a thin wisp of smoke and begin to understand and live the truth of who you are.
Self-love will find a home in your heart when you give yourself time and space to truly nurture you, to be with yourself, doing nothing in particular, just being you in all of your glory.
Self-love will seep from every pore in your body hitting those who surround you, making them wonder what it is that allows you to shine so bright, when you give that loving Creator within permission to use her gifts and to live her value of expression.
In honor of my grandfather, may I make a request of you: When you wake up in the morning embrace you. When you wake up in the morning take a deep breath, grateful that your breath is a part of this life. When you wake up in the morning, know for yourself that you are enough. We all come from Source, God, Allah, Goddess, Creator – whatever name you choose to give this Great Power of Love – and without you this Loving Power would be incomplete. Come to this place, come to your morning celebrating your inherent Divinity.
Please tell me in the comments below:
What do you do to show yourself that you love you? We say the words often enough to others, but we rarely say them to our self. How often do you thank yourself for a kind word or deed done by you for you or done by you for others?
Carolyn
Reading your words is like being given a raft and floating with ease on gentle water that glistens. This language may sound prosaic, but it is precisely how I feel.