For so many years, I heard platitudes, sayings, quotes – I took them all in.  I “believed” them.  Sayings like: You have to love yourself before you can love other people.  You’ll be ready for a relationship only when you don’t think you need one anymore.   Sure, I sometimes spouted them off to friends or even my children.  But I didn’t get it.  I didn’t have a clue what it meant.  Loving myself?  That always sounded like some kind of hippy crap.  I mean, part of me thought that of course I loved myself.  What does it even mean to not love yourself?  But then a bigger part of me definitely did not feel love toward myself.  Sometimes I wasn’t even sure I knew what love was in general. 

Through the years, I studied and I worked, I journaled and I read.  I read dozens of helpful books, and a few that I found not helpful.  I studied my butt off – worked so hard to understand.  Sure, perhaps I was too much “in my head,” but wasn’t that yet another platitude, another thing that just didn’t make actual sense to me.   And I kept on reading.  I read books, I listened to podcasts, I read advice columns.  Sometimes I got angry hearing the same advice over and over.  I got frustrated not understanding why I seemed to be so different than other people.  But over time, with each book and each podcast and each journal entry, I took one step toward better understanding.  And, every so often, I would take a large step toward understanding.  Every so often, I would take a giant step. 

One of my most profound steps has been the time, as an adult, I walked into my closet and found myself looking straight at a portrait of 4-year-old me.  It was a portrait my mother had given me when she was decluttering her home.  In the picture, I was posed just so in my favorite red and white checkered dress with my favorite ring on my finger, and I was smiling somewhat mildly at the photographer.  I look very sweet, very innocent, and very young.  I had no idea what was in front of me.  And in the instant that I really looked at that face, it hit me.  I knew that my beating myself up had to stop, because in so doing, I was also beating up that sweet, innocent, 4-year-old girl.  She definitely did not deserve that – that was very clear to me in that moment.  If I couldn’t decide to love myself, I could decide to love her. And that was a giant step.

While I continue to grow in that direction, and am certain I always will, I found myself wanting to help my kids reach these milestones earlier than I did, if at all possible.  I vowed to write down my path, to mark the path that I had taken.  I am certain that my way is not the way that anybody, including my children, will go, but sometimes, when things are feeling unfamiliar, seeing a cairn along the side of the path can be reassuring. 

Seeing myself as a separate person has been so freeing and eye-opening.  I think about that little 4-year-old girl a lot, and I keep that portrait in my closet to this day.

Question: What saying or sayings come to mind that you have heard over and over that don’t really make sense to you? 

Exercise: Find a picture of yourself at a young age.  Look at that person and decide to love him or her.