INVITATIONS TO LOVE YOU MORE
by JW McKeeth
Most of us have heard the notion that you can't love another until you love yourself, but what does it mean to love yourself?
There may be as many ways to love, or not, as there are people on the planet. My own learning, understanding, and acknowledgment that I love myself has emerged over time and often through unexpected ways: a desire for a better life, a comment from a stranger, a deep loss, a quiet whisper from someone who truly sees us. Years ago, I told a friend that I felt trapped in a bad relationship. Their reply was eye-opening, "I know you do…but you aren't." Turns out, a feeling is not a fact, but it can motivate.
Is love hard-wired? Is it a feeling, a thought, an action? A combined force? Is it experienced as a willingness to go above and beyond for the people in our family or circle, a soldier's willingness to die for one's country, or in a mother's instinct to protect her young? Are these acts of love or simply part of the survival instinct?
Researching love and self-love returned me to the fact that everyone has to define love for themselves. We are all free to love anyone and ourselves, but we may pay dearly until we forge our own love definitions. What I share here is merely an opportunity to consider and clarify your own personal definitions of what love looks and feels like for YOU. I’ve come to understand that love comes with continued education. Behaving lovingly is an ongoing practice; we surely benefit when we treat ourselves with the same tenderness, care, and loving behavior we extend to others.
I share my self-love behavior as invitations that hold their own threshold to relief. They're not linear or complete, more a detailed breakdown of ways I learned to tend to my personhood. Established boundaries reminding me how I treat and trust myself, not tell others how to behave. My hope is that they might serve as touchstones for anyone needing support in their own self-discovery. These are invitations to love you more.
Self-Care
This includes but is not limited to the daily tending of basics: Hygiene, nourishment, rest, movement. Only you know the exact degree of your hunger, urgency, or discomfort. Your ability to respond to your needs is an inside job. Even when we behave lovingly toward ourselves, we may not feel it as love, but love is also an action, especially when making sure our own needs are met before we try to support another capable human.
Self-Soothing
This internal care is often heard in the kind, inner voice; a guard that keeps us from self-criticism and shame. Real soothing begins when we realize that just as no one else can feel when our bladder is full, only we know what truly works for us as we move in and out of clarity. We have to have our own back. Because we're creatures of habit, we're served by periodically checking with ourselves to see if we still align with our chosen careers, relationships, religions, intoxications, and indulgences. Not in judgment, but in alignment. We are always entitled to our own do-overs without beating ourselves up when we need to try again, change course, or end something that no longer serves us.
Self-Acceptance
Admitting to myself not just what I did, but the impact my choices had on my life caused me to scrutinize the things I tried to pin on others. Acknowledging dark thoughts. Embracing feelings of embarrassment. Owning it all in spite of discomfort. To know we are worthy of our own unconditional love, no matter what. Consider that a mistake is merely a stake placed in a spot that doesn't serve us, and the ancient Greek word for 'sin' was an archery term meaning 'to fall short of the mark.' These don't mean we're wrong or bad. We don't need to criticize lessons that taught us well. They're opportunities to re-stake and re-aim, not give up in failure and condemnation. Acceptance lets us stand without collapsing under perfectionism or the fiction that we should've known better sooner.
Self-Awareness
Seeing ourselves from a 10,000-foot view with compassion, honesty, and instruction. Being our own best friend and guide, adjusting course without shame. Get curious about what triggers strong emotions, and recognize that rage is like an internal counselor revealing where we've been wounded, or when we need to leave a room, temporarily or permanently. Awareness belongs in the mirror and in the spaces around us. We can speak up for ourselves, and we get to decide if it's appropriate to make others, especially those who may be impacted by us, aware of the changes and new directions we're choosing for ourselves.
Self-Validation
Tell yourself with absolute conviction that you are good enough. One challenging day, I caught my reflection in the mirror and said, 'You're just not good enough!' And before the next breath, I heard that compassionate voice in my head announce, 'Oh well!' I laughed out loud, realizing how ridiculous it was for me to believe that I wasn't good enough. It was not my truth; it was a bad habit I had to break. I am good enough to be me right where I'm at. It is so important to be yourself simply because 'everyone else is taken.’
Self-Nurturing
Acts that say, 'I matter,' like a square of chocolate, a fun trip, a day to do nothing. We're not going to matter to everyone just as not everyone matters to us. Nurturing ourselves can show up in our routines, meditation practices, or holding ourselves, arms wrapped around us tight while we cry. It can mean knowing whose table to go to; surrounding ourselves with people who help thin our grief or fatten our rewards. Nurturing is self-described and may include the release of ideas and people that no longer align with our ever-evolving values.
Self-Reliance
We may discover that relying on others can come with crushing blows. When that happens, I remind myself that "everything is going to be okay in the end and if it's not okay, then it's not the end." Self-reliance is remembering we're on a planet that has continued to rotate around the sun. We can rely on change, unpredictability, and the fact that we may suffer, sometimes unnecessarily. Relying on yourself is trusting you have the capacity to press on through adversity, just as you have up to now. It includes knowing when to ask for help, including a call to 9-1-1 or 9-8-8. We still have our own back when we know to ask for help to protect it.
Self-Resilience
The quiet strength that whispers, 'This too shall pass.' We've survived every 24-hour day we've ever lived; that proof of endurance is a resource. I elected natural childbirth and was very grateful for my sister-in-law's advice from her own self-resilience, 'When it gets to the point you can't stand it anymore, it doesn't get any worse.' Years later, I still draw on that strength. Self-resilience is staying in our moments while the air moves in and out of our lungs. It's understanding this is the only time we're truly alive. I've come to believe my worry and anxiety occur when I relocate my thoughts to the past or future, where there is no oxygen, ability to make changes, or knowledge of the resources that will be available when we need them.
Self-Honoring
Respecting and celebrating our preferences, quirks, and boundaries be them big or small. I love to sleep on flannel sheets so much I pack them when I travel, and I'll always choose quiet over loud. Self-honoring allows us to renegotiate commitments, or the terms we made that no longer align with us as we've grown and matured. When renegotiation fails, honoring who you currently are must prevail. There is a vast difference between being kind and being nice. How many times have you agreed to do something and then kicked yourself while you were doing it? That's when you were being 'nice.' Being kind includes you. Fawning is a fear response that has us 'setting ourselves on fire to keep others warm.' Self-honoring supports us in declining certain invitations and avoiding burnout.
Self-Expression
The right to speak, create, sing, dance, write, or simply say 'No!' without apology. Give yourself absolute permission to have a good life and to take up space on the planet with your unique presence; we all have contributions to make. I was the third child born into a 'complete' family, who joked that I was an accident. After I became a mother, I told my parents my being unplanned did not make me an accident; I was on purpose! When they lovingly apologized, I realized I didn't need an apology, I just needed to stand up for myself! Expression is how the love of our own life and selves become visible in the world. That visibility requires us to hold firmly to what I believe is not selfishness, but an enlightened self-interest.
Self-Pleasure
From small indulgences like a square of chocolate or reading away a rainy afternoon all the way to sensual and sexual satisfaction on your own terms, self-pleasure is giving ourselves permission to feel good. Pleasure isn't proof of selfishness; it's evidence of aliveness. We remind our precious body that it's safe to feel, to soften, to receive from within. And yes, sometimes pleasure is derived from our own thoughts, imperfect, and private. Private honesty and what you do alone is just that, private.
Self-Responsibility
It's important to learn and accept our personal responsibility to the life we have, whether we create it by design, it unfolds by default, or some unproven combination of the two. It is not about what happens or what happened. What happened can't be changed; it happened. Life is all about what we do with what happens, regardless of who caused it. When something unexpected pulls the rug out from underneath us, such as an accident, a break-up, getting fired, or learning of a loved one's death, we may feel like victims of circumstance, or like things are out of our control. But self-responsibility comes in knowing you are here, now, and each breath is a choice to keep showing up. Raise your right hand and claim, 'I choose to do this life, come what may.' And let self-love lead. I know my own self-love was missing in some past relationships. I loved them, and they loved them; there was no one left loving me. I had to learn the hard way to find out who was really responsible for my life. I’m fairly certain the only person who had ever really betrayed me was me.
More Invitations
There are many more invitations to love you more for YOU to discover on your own. The poet Rumi wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” That line changed my thoughts. Accepting these invitations is how we claim power over our lives. When we care for, soothe, nurture, rely on, honor, express, and accept ourselves, we stop outsourcing our worth. We become the ultimate authority on what we need and who we are. None of us know what will happen next, so anticipate a great life over doom. Self-love isn't isolation or arrogance; it's the foundation for genuine connection. With love comes the witnessing of our own and others' humanness. We don't have to earn self-love; we have to cultivate and claim it. We do this by putting our stakes where they serve us, then raising our own flag of personal sovereignty. Always continue on from where you are.
JW McKeeth is a writer and self-agency advocate loving and living in the Pacific Northwest. In support of everyone’s individual right to personal sovereignty, she offers "Gatherings that Move" in nature and at retreats wherever inspiration or invitations lead.