I’ve begun a journey to love me….It wasn’t that I hated me but more I didn’t know that I wasn’t loving me! I wasn’t taught how to love myself, I wasn’t aware that loving yourself didn’t always come naturally. I didn’t know that loving me meant sometimes I had to be rough with myself and the choices I make. That sometimes I might have to hurt now to feel better later. My first inclination is to love others before myself, not that I wasn’t worthy of loving myself first but that the greatest form of love was to put others first. Now in certain instances that is exactly what should happen but for the most part, loving you should come before loving others. See the danger in loving yourself last is that you become accustomed to that type of behavior. You start to allow people to treat you as if you are insignificant, as if your needs don’t matter…all in the name of being loving and selfless.

You begin to fall victim to the ideology that if you give everyone what they need, they’ll give you what you need…WRONG! The more you take yourself out of the equation the less your problem will be solved. Now  I’m not talking about selfishness and being self-centered, no I’m talking healthy self love, esteeming yourself highly….seeing yourself the way God sees you.

God created you as a beautiful, unique person endowed with a special set of gifts and talents to shower on the world. Then we somehow become infected with negative thoughts that tell us we are not good enough and so it begins a spiral down a rabbit hole so deep that we are unable to find our way back out of it. So we start looking for someone to help us get out, someone to help us find our way back to where we first began. Only problem with this is that most of the time those who we choose to help us are just as clueless and self hating as we are. And on it goes until we finally see the light and break free.

However freedom always comes with a price, winning back your self esteem is a hard fought battle that usually leaves ugly, deep scars. But no matter how fierce the battle is I’m here to tell you that it’s worth it! Fighting for love, the love of self is the highest and noblest battle you will ever face. You will meet many an opponent who seeks to destroy you but not to worry, in the end you will be victorious. You now have the strength to fight long, hard and courageously because you now see the vision of who you were are all along.

From the mouth of the late great Whitney Houston singing, the greatest love is happening to me, I’ve found the greatest love of all inside of me.  Love doesn’t happen to you it is you and it radiates to everyone who is near it until it’s mirrored back to you. If you don’t see love in the mirror looking back at you time to reevaluate what you are seeing and through whose eyes you are looking through.