Self-Love

           My best friend just sent me a message with a picture containing this quote: “Someone once told me that I’d never be able to love unless I learned to love myself, but I loved him so much that I forgot what hating myself felt like.”

As this is a quote that’s meant to get you thinking, as soon as I read it a million thoughts raced through my head. The most prominent one being, I don’t want someone that I love so much to believe that the first part of this quote is true. “Someone once told me that I’d never be able to love unless I learned to love myself.” Never would I want the most important person in my life to think that this is how love works, hell I wouldn’t want anyone to think that this is how love works. Admittedly, I am not exactly an expert in the love department, however I have very, very strong opinions on it.

The person who sent me the quote is perhaps the most influential person I’ve had the honor of knowing. Despite her incredible feats, just like we all do, she struggles with self-love. As a person looking in from the outside, I do have trouble understanding what she has not to love, but I’m not in her head and I think she feels the same way about me. Take that into consideration if you choose, but she is the most loving human being I know as well and I really think it would be a loss for the world not to feel her love because she thinks it’s invalid.

Anyone can love. No matter who you are, how old you are, where you come from, what has happened to you, what struggles you have, none of this can discredit anyone’s ability to love.  If you were to ask a group of sixteen-year-old girls if any of them loved themselves 100%, not one of those girls would answer yes. So is it fair to say that an entire population of people is incapable of loving others? It is not fair, because it simply isn’t true.

Learning to love yourself is the hardest kind of love to learn in my opinion. Deep, true, whole self-love is a very rare trait to come across in a person. We learn to love by loving others. Sometimes it takes someone else to teach us how to love. Because when you love someone so wholeheartedly, it can teach you how to love yourself as well. Sometimes it takes a broken heart to learn how to love yourself. After deeply loving someone else, when they are no longer there to love, we can redirect that love onto ourselves.

Basically, you don’t have to love yourself to love someone else. It’s a complicated and confusing, and painful, and enchanting thing, love. And its different for every person. But do it. Don’t be afraid to love someone with everything you have. Don’t be afraid to tell them everyday that you love them. Don’t be afraid to show them that you love them. Because doing all of these can teach you very important things and they will move you towards being a more whole human being. And that’s the goal, right?

Love and hugs

xx