Love You First

Since this is February and love tends to be in the air, I’m going to share a few things I love, with you.  Those who know me best know there isn’t much that brings me greater joy than gummy bears.  My beloved bears, though, don’t hold a candle to my love for thoughtfully curated words packing an insight yielding punch.  I also love love.  When love is good, there’s nothing better, and when it doesn’t work out, it feels as though there’s nothing worse.  But there is something worse: giving up on it and yourself in the process.

At best, Valentine’s Day celebrates how wonderful it feels to love and be loved.  At worst, it perpetuates the misguided notion that love and fairytales are one and the same.  That said, with Galentine’s Day celebrations on the rise, it’s nice to see romantic love and platonic love sharing the limelight.  But, what about self-love?  It’s the most important kind of love we can give ourselves and, still, it gets a bad rap.  Healthy self-love isn’t harmful, controlling, or mean; those are defenses born of a lack of self-awareness. It does, however, require commitment and practice. Hear this:

“Before self-love becomes a liberation, it is first a burden.  Well, there’s the anger at who treated you poorly when you didn’t know to ask for better treatment.  The anger at yourself for what you’ve allowed.  There’s the grief for lost time.  There’s the strangling necessity to push people, things, ideas, out, out, out, because there’s no room for them.  There’s the loneliness and isolation that accompanies the growth of self.  There’s the new boundary lines, the new range of the word no, the opening of eyes that would rather be shut, and the terrifying realization that love isn’t synonymous with joy.  It’s synonymous with growth.”
-Jamie Varon-

I understand that words like ‘burden’, ‘anger’, and ‘loneliness’ aren’t in line with the spirit of Valentine’s Day.  I also understand that love is hard and if we don’t know how to love ourselves well, we can’t love anybody else any better.  Self-love can’t be excluded from the limelight; it’s the life force that feeds every other kind of connection.

What would it look like to love and honor yourself with as much intention as you care for the most important people in your life?