are you loving yourself "right" ?

On Monday I attended the Be Your Own Best Friend class at the SheHive led by Lisa Machala of The Collaborative Body. The purpose of the class was to help you replace your negative self-talk with self-leadership.

At one point in the class Lisa asked how we knew someone was our friend. I jotted down a few notes… a friend is someone who is kind to me, challenges me with love, laughs at my jokes, has long, brave talks with me and performs acts of service for me.

I stared at the page as tears started to well up in my eyes.

Acts of Service is my love language. My husband’s love language is any of the others except Acts of Service  (true story). This disparity has caused more than one fight over the 16 years of our marriage, but we finally figured it out. Which is exactly what I was thinking of at the moment…
“People who love you learn to speak your love language,” I said to myself. And that’s when it hit me…
I don’t speak my own love language - to me!
​
I will do most anything to self-soothe - self-affirmations at the high-end of the spectrum to eating and shopping at the low end of the spectrum. None of it truly fills me because words of affirmations and gifts and all the rest of it doesn’t feel like love to me. The only thing that feels like love is doing something for myself that I truly need - resting, exercising, taking care of my home, paying my bills, etc.

Why hadn’t I ever put those ideas together before?

The tears came because I had finally cracked the code, but also because I realized how poor of a friend I had been to myself all these years. Why had I denied myself true love for so long? (You don’t have to answer that question - I have a therapist with many children that need to be put through college and my many-year journey to self-love and self-acceptance is paying for at least a few of their degrees.)

Are you giving love to yourself in a way you can recognize it?

​With much love and gratitude,