by JW McKeeth
Love has so many definitions, but what does it mean to love yourself? It’s said you
can’t love another until you love yourself, but is that true? If examples of love came with
conditions, control or pain, real love, given or received, may feel foreign or unnatural. At
first, anyway. While we are free to love ourselves, we may pay dearly when we don’t
actually know what that means.
For some, the most dominant feeling is guilt or shame, which are pleas for acceptance,
forgiveness, or understanding. People may feel bad for not knowing how to feel better.
Or they may behave lovingly toward themselves but still feel unfed, as though the
nourishment can’t reach the place that’s truly hungry.
Learning how to love myself showed up in unexpected ways: a comment from a
stranger, a deep loss, a quiet whisper from someone worthy of my trust. A friend’s reply
offered a true eye-opener when I told them I felt trapped in a bad relationship. They
said, “I know you do, but you’re not.” With practice, we can learn to treat ourselves with
the same tenderness and care we give to others. The twelfth century poet Rumi wrote,
“Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within
yourself that we have built against it.”
My own understanding has evolved to seeing all love as an ongoing education. I
express it in invitations that meet our need for relief and raise our bar. These invitations
aren’t linear or complete, but a sharing of my own reminders for trusting myself. 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
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. Often, we must apply the care to ourselves that we once thought
would be reciprocated when we gave it so freely to others. Just as it’s uncomfortable to
receive from someone running on empty, we need to make sure our own needs are met
before we make any effort to support another human, especially a capable one.
Self-Soothing
Self-soothing is internal care, often happening in silence. If you don’t have a quiet voice
that reminds you to take a breath, step back, reassess what you want, and if what you
often tell yourself sounds more like criticism, it’s time to develop internal compassion, a
commitment to not shaming or harming yourself further with words that aren’t helpful.
When soothing is external, like shopping, endless scrolling, or intoxication, we can be
lured by temporary relief that arrests our natural flow into maturity. Worth examining,
too, are the belief systems we inherited rather than chose: the religions, politics, career
paths, the life expectations handed to us before we were old enough to question them.
They may serve beautifully. Or you may discover you’ve been honoring someone else’s
answers to questions you were too afraid to ask. Real soothing begins when we realize
that just as no one else can feel our bladder when it’s full, only we know what truly
works for us. Coping mechanisms can become emotional bypasses. At some point, we
must realize that the job of protecting our own well-being cannot be outsourced.
Self-Acceptance
For me, this was the most difficult undertaking. Admitting to myself not just what I did,
but the impact my choices had on me, caused me to scrutinize the things I had tried to
pin on others. Acknowledging dark thoughts. Embracing times of embarrassment.
Owning it all in spite of discomfort. Knowing that we’re always worthy of our own
unconditional love, no matter what, is essential to our human experience.
When my children were young, I gently taught them that a mistake was just a stake
placed in a spot that required re-staking. I also felt great relief to learn the word “sin”
meant “to fall short of the mark,” an Ancient Greek archery term indicating an arrow
didn’t reach its intended target. These words don’t carry judgment, an indictment of
failure, or condemnation. Acceptance is the foundation that lets us stand right where we
are without collapsing under perfectionism or the fiction that we should have known
better, sooner.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness lifts us to a 10,000-foot view so we can observe ourselves with
compassion, honesty, and curiosity. Becoming our own best friend and guide, adjusting
course without shame. This means getting curious about what triggers strong emotions.
It’s okay to recognize that rage, our own or another’s, can be an indication of where
we’ve been wounded, or when it’s time to leave a room, either temporarily or
permanently. Awareness belongs not only to our internal reflections, but to the spaces
around us. When we are aware of ourselves, we can speak up for ourselves, letting
others know where we are, or where we’re going. And to keep going!
Self-Validation
It’s okay to tell yourself with absolute conviction that you are good enough. Years ago, I
felt miserable and was crying in the shower. As I stepped out, I caught my reflection in
the mirror and I said, “You’re just not good enough!” And before the next breath, I heard
my compassionate intuition say in my head, “Oh well!” And I laughed out loud as I
realized just how ridiculous it was for me to believe I was not “good enough.” It was a
bad habit I decided to break. Just like everyone else, I am always good enough to be
right where I am as me, myself, and I. It’s essential that we give ourselves permission to
be ourselves, and to have a great life on our terms.
Self-Nurturing
Think of soft, kind gestures: a favorite dessert, a pedicure, a spontaneous mental-health
day. Acts that say, “I matter.” We’re not going to matter to everyone just as not
everyone matters to us. Nurturing ourselves can show up in our routines like making the
bed every morning, journaling, meditation practices, or not pressuring ourselves to
perform. It can look like holding ourselves, arms wrapped around us tightly while we cry.
It can also 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, so I often 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, and
the seasons have not ceased. We can rely on change, unpredictability, or 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 you
are overwhelmed and need to ask for help. Reaching out is not a failure of self-reliance.
We still have our own back when we know to ask for help to protect it, including calling
9-1-1 and 9-8-8.
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. When I chose natural
childbirth, my sister-in-law shared from her own self-resilience as she said, “When it
gets to the point you can’t stand it anymore, it doesn’t get any worse.” I drew on her
knowledge and found it was true. Years later, I still draw on that strength. Self-resilience
is staying in our moments while breath moves in and out of our lungs, for that is the only
time we are truly alive. I’ve come to believe my worry and anxiety are the results of trying to live in the past or future, where there is no oxygen, no control, and an inability
to know what resources will be available going forward.
Self-Honoring
Respecting and celebrating our preferences, quirks, and boundaries, whether big or
small. I love to sleep on flannel sheets so much I pack them when I travel. Self-honoring
also compels us to renegotiate previous commitments or their terms. When we’ve
grown beyond them, or notice we’re the only one keeping them, we have to realign. If
renegotiation fails, honoring who you currently are must prevail. This has taught me the
vast difference between being kind and being nice. How many times have you agreed to
do something for someone and then kicked yourself while you were doing it? That’s
when you were being “nice.” Being kind includes you by not putting yourself in situations
you know you don’t want but think you “should.” Fawning is an old fear response that
has us “setting ourselves on fire to keep others warm.” Self-honoring supports us in
declining invitations and avoiding burnout.
I believe we only ever do what we want and that sometimes the choices in front of us
are awful, so the “want” may be for the one of least resistance. I noticed in myself that if
I think I ‘should’, ‘ought’ or ‘need’ to do something, it doesn’t get done. If someone else
thinks I should, ought or need to do something, it still doesn’t get done. I was asked how
I get my laundry done. I answered, when I want clean clothes, I want to do my laundry.
Same with paying my bills, getting a job, sitting still. If it’s not a true want, you’re not
living your life.
Self-Expression
Self-expression is knowing we have the right to take up space on this planet with our
unique presence to be willing to speak, create, sing, dance, write, or simply say “No”
without apology. It’s not a competition; we all have contributions to make to others. I
was the surprise third child for an established family of four who often joked I was an
accident. After I became a mother, I announced to my parents that just because I was
unplanned did not mean I was an accident; I knew I was on purpose! When they
lovingly apologized, I realized I didn’t need it, I just needed to stand up for myself. When
we respect ourselves, we don’t have to exhaust ourselves convincing anyone that we’re
worthy of it. Expression is how the love of our own lives and selves become visible in
the world. That visibility requires what I experience as “enlightened self-interest.” Unlike
selfishness that takes from others, it’s filling myself and making room for what is
authentically mine.
Self-Pleasure
From small indulgences like a square of chocolate, 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 is evidence of aliveness. We remind our
precious body that it’s safe to feel, to soften, to receive from within. Sometimes pleasure
is derived from our own thoughts, private and imperfect. Sometimes pleasure is as
simple as privately acknowledging there are people (and even parts of us) that are just
delicious to abhor. Private honesty is just that: private. Self-pleasure requires your own
definition.
Self-Responsibility
It’s important to learn and accept our personal responsibility to the life we have, whether
we create it by design, whether it unfolds by default, or some unproven combination of
the two. It is not about what happened; that can’t be changed. Life is about what we do
with what happens, often in spite of what or who caused it. And yes, some decisions will
have to be continually revised. When something unexpected happens like an accident,
an ending through breaking up, getting fired, or learning of a loved one’s death, we may
feel like we are victims to the circumstances; things are out of our control. Where self-
responsibility takes hold is knowing each breath, albeit unconscious, continues life
where you find yourself on the planet. Here. Now. An invitation to claim a choice to do
this life your own unique way and have the ability to respond to it.
The Sovereignty of Self-Love
Accepting these invitations is an opportunity to truly 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. Self-love isn’t isolation or arrogance. It’s the foundation for a genuine connection to
ourselves and with others. Standing in our own power allows us to enter relationships
as true witnesses to our own and others’ humanness. We don’t have to earn self-love,
we have to cultivate and claim it by putting our stakes where they serve us, then raising
our own flag of sovereignty and letting it wave freely.