Radical Self Love: Healing Unspoken Places
It has been said that the hardest work you will ever do will be on yourself. For a person to take a look in the mirror and face themselves takes extreme courage. I had to hit rock bottom to find my mirror and it was devastating. For some of you reading this, that line will resonate as perhaps that is what started your journey towards self-love.
As a woman and a woman of color, it’s like walking with a double-edged sword. The expectations are high, the circumstances can be grim, and the world often does not see us. So, why wouldn’t it be hard for you to see yourself. Women are supposed to be nurturing, take care of the house, raise the children and never show any signs of weakness. Because if we show our vulnerability, we could be taken advantage of and told that we are overly emotional.
Then there you are losing your mind, barely holding it together and you have to make a decision. Do I quit or do I fight to rebuild? I tried to quit, did not succeed and have had the opportunity to rebuild myself from the ground up. Here is what I have learned:
Self-love is a lot of courage and it is you betting on yourself. It is the process of choosing you and choosing you every time. It is the courage to look in the mirror and say if nobody else sees you, I see you. It is finding out what makes you happy and beginning to do those things with or without people.
Self-love is acknowledging the trauma you have endured. It is choosing to forgive your offenders so that bitterness doesn’t take root in your heart. The forgiveness is for you and you alone. It is the ability to forgive yourself for being wherever you were; when they said what they said or did what they did. You are a human being, a great one and what happened should not have happened. It is giving yourself permission to acknowledge your pain.
Self-love is choosing to uproot the pain associated with the trauma. It is getting to the root of the issue. It is finding the trigger point and saying you no longer have any power and taking your power back. It is realizing you are powerful and deserve to heal. It is freedom from the cage of pain and stepping into the destination of wholeness.
Self-love is change and radical acceptance. It is ownership of your story and all of who you are. It is saying this is who I am, this is what I like, and this is me today. It is the ability to let go of who you were when you didn’t love yourself and accept that you love yourself now. It is a doing away of the old and embracing the new.
Self-love is gratitude for yourself. It is gratitude for everything that makes you, YOU. It is a grateful heart for every flaw. It is a heart of gratitude for the color of your eyes, the texture of your hair and your beautiful body. It is gratitude for life and the fact that you are still in the land of the living. It is gratitude for every stage of your life that brought you to where you are today.
When you love yourself your perspective about everything in life changes. When we don’t love ourselves, we are more likely to make decisions that are not in our best interest. This is because you have not made yourself a top priority and you are not at the forefront of your decision making. If you have already spent most of your life being angry and not loving yourself, perhaps today can be the start to a change. It is time to change the lens in which you see yourself.
Heal the unspoken places, the places you refuse to go to or acknowledge are there. Understand that it’s okay not to be okay. Honoring how you feel is how you can start to get to a better place. Because healing and forgiveness lead to self-love. You give so much love and extend so much grace to other people. It’s time you extend that same love and grace to yourself. The queen in you deserves it so give it to her and keep giving it until you radiate like the sun, shining everywhere you go.
Author: Boniele Parr