Until I Believe It

I was just having a conversation with a dear friend about how wounded people have a hard time with love. I had a hard time with love for a long time. Before I began to understand my need for healing, I (unconsciously) identified deeply with my woundings. I was so broken that I did not believe it was possible for anyone to truly, fully love me if they truly, fully knew me.   

It didn’t matter how much someone showed me love, I kept a firm lock on my innermost heart because I believed that if they saw that deep in, they would realize my ugly truth and reject me. And so when that person (inevitably) disappointed me, I allowed this to solidify my belief in my unworthiness. You don’t really love me.  No one could as far as I was concerned. 

I had yet to understand that my truest self is in fact the part that is the essence of the Creator.  Divine. 

As I have prayed for and worked intensively on healing, THIS is the hardest part for me.  To know myself as loved.  For to truly know myself as loved, I have to believe that I am lovable.  And that means getting to know and love all of my parts. When I am in my shame, or even just in moments when I feel the prick of intimidation, smallness, not-good-enough-ness, I’m blocking the doors and windows that allow in love. If I do not believe something can be it will not be. When I do not believe myself to be lovable I will not experience feeling loved.

It is in understanding, in knowing ourselves as holy, accepting and embracing all of our parts as beautiful, perfectly imperfect that we begin to heal.  

Self-love gets a bad rap but I’m going to keep talking about it because I don’t think we totally get it.  It’s not about spa days or skipping the gym.  Self love is taking care of my heart so that I can be at peace and nurtured and then I get to show up for the people I love and serve with a full tank, with the ability to support them as they need; to hold space without judgment. 

We can’t give what we don’t have.  We can’t be what we don’t believe ourselves to be.  These false beliefs turn into self-fulfilling prophecies and we sit disempowered in emotional isolation and loneliness.

But it all comes back to love. 

The extent to which I can know myself as loved is a marker, more than anything else, about how far I’ve come.  It also spotlights the healing that still lies ahead for me.

I hope someday I can get to a place where I can see that this is completely true. That I am wholly loved and supported by the great Universal love, I call it God. And also by me.  Right now it’s a day by day, sometimes a minute by minute process.  Oh but I am so worth it. 

Get to know her, your deepest, truest, darkest self.  Embrace her pain, even her suffering.  Be willing to love her enough to let go of her mistakes. Give her the gift of forgiveness .  Get to like her.  Take care of her.  She deserves it. She is precious. She is loved.  

With Love,