Love Yourself

We don't love others the way they need to be loved. We love others the way we need to be loved. I'm sure this is not a revolutionary concept. However, when you know it, you know it. And I don't mean an intellectual knowing - I mean a felt sense, aha, embodied knowing. Are you loving your partner, your kids the way they need and want to be loved? Or might you be loving them the way you were taught to love? You might be living in coherence and how you were loved was authentic and divine. Allowing you to grow into your authentic wholeness. Yet, for those of us who were not, all is not lost. As adults, we actually do not need someone outside ourselves in order to return to our inherent wholeness and divine love. The beauty of growing up is that we can begin to meet our own unmet needs. And return to our heart knowing that love is our birthright. Don't get me wrong, if you have a partner who is open, willing and capable of doing this work with you, you both will benefit from the relational repair, deep healing and return to wholeness. But if not, you have everything within and are wholly capable of this reclamation and repair on your own.

I can already hear the question - HOW?

Breathe into that question. S L O W D O W N. For many of us, we begin with the foundational false belief that we were loved the way we deserved to be loved. So, one way to begin is by questioning this false belief. In actuality, we were all born whole and divine. We were born to love and be loved. So from this premise, it is never a question of worthiness - it was simply a pattern repeated. How your caregiver was loved is the way they will be capable of loving. Which can be great for some of us. But for others, who were conditionally loved and made to feel that we needed to earn it or didn't inherently deserve it, the work begins with acknowledging this false belief. And dismantling it. And remembering, there is nothing outside yourself that needs to fill you up. You are whole and have all the love you need within. It has simply been buried beneath all of the layering of false beliefs and protective barriers that has kept it hidden.

Our precious hearts needed to be protected when we were too little to know that others love us the way they are capable of loving - not necessarily the way we deserve to be loved. And so barriers were built, for our survival, when our cries for our needs to be met were left unanswered or worse. The way our body protects us when we are small is brilliant and adaptive. And then it simply repeats these habituated, survival patterns. And so, when we grow up, it is imperative to recognize the patterns that kept us feeling safe when we were small. Acknowledge them, honor them and begin to release them. They were brilliantly adaptive when we were little. But when we grow up and have more resources, coping mechanisms, knowledge and awareness, these very patterns keep us stuck and disconnected from ourselves, our hearts, others and the world.

It doesn't help that we are taught very early on to search for something, someone, outside ourselves to love us, complete us. This messaging is everywhere. And so the search begins, quite early for some, quite unrelenting for others. We chase the love that ignites the spark that is inherently within all of us. We begin to think it is the person outside ourselves - our partner, our kids - who ignited the spark, who brought this love to us. But no, that spark of love, already inside of you, was simply remembered through the reflection of your own love buried within. So, if you are propelled to chase the spark, chase it within and begin to see others and the world reflect this deep, inherent love back to you.