“Love yourself.”
From self-help to social media, self love and self acceptance have become a trendy statement. Ironically, the publicly posted selfie is often coupled with #selflove and yet, the post itself solicits love, likes and approval from followers. Which begs the question, would you need that validation if you truly loved yourself?
Love yourself, accept yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Have compassion for yourself. YOU.ARE.ENOUGH.
This is the number one piece of advice I heard throughout my divorce and subsequent identity crisis.
I think this is often the go-to remedy when we are in the throes of pain — love induced comfort. And because the person that loved us doesn’t anymore, we better start being one badass bitch and start loving ourselves.
That’s what the self-help book, the Instagram influencer, and Oprah said so, it must be true.
This bullshit didn’t work for me.
While it sounded magical that I could stare into my mirror every morning and tell myself I loved me some me…I felt like an idiot and well, I was lying to myself.
I didn’t even fucking KNOW me. How in the world could I love someone I didn’t even KNOW?
Furthermore, the fact that I didn’t even KNOW myself, made me question what the hell I had been doing with my life and this thought process doesn’t incite a lot of self love feels.
I’ve often gone back through hard events in my life to examine them in detail. In search of signs I missed and missteps I made, thinking that if I can just deconstruct the pieces, gaining clarity and understanding, I won’t ever find myself in the same difficult situation again. The mistake I make in doing this however, is going through the events trying to figure out where I could have said or done something different to change an outcome. A more meaningful consideration would be gained from observing who I was in those particular situations and how that differs from the person I want(ed) to be.
I worked with a therapist in the year after my marriage dissolved and a lot of our discussions centered on self-worth. Often when relationships fail, self-worth is triggered. This can be especially true if you’re not the one ending the relationship.
Relationships offer consistent feedback, both positive and negative about our overall existence within a dynamic. Without a clear awareness of the disparity between who we are as individuals and who we are relationally, the relational observations can become exclusive to how we see ourselves. Relationships offer a really wonderful experience of belonging and comfort so it’s possible to lean into these feelings so much so that individuality becomes neglected in an effort to nurture the relationship and preserve our impression of security.
One of the most significant exercises I did was to write a “Fuck You Letter” to my ex-husband. I basically wrote, line for line “Fuck you for this. Fuck you for that. And fuck you for that too.” Then at the end, I took out his name and put the word, “ME” in place of it.
The most compelling sentence that came from that letter was,
“Fuck ME, for leaving ME.”
When I read it, it hit me. It was the very first time I started to genuinely see my own contribution to the break in our marriage and I recognized that I had abandoned myself a long time before my husband had ever left me. This was humbling and heartbreaking on a whole new level.
When we are negligent with ourselves, we run the risk of sacrificing our values for the good of our relationships and “sacrifice” is often a manipulation tactic costumed in martyrdom. Our willingness to sacrifice is often met with an expectation that our [friend/partner/child] reciprocate and sacrifice for the good of the relationship too. Rather than achieving the result of a stronger bond however, what arises is resentment and mistrust. Resentment because the sacrifice feels obligatory. Mistrust because one or both people fail to stay devoted to themselves and what they stand for.
If you aren’t loyal to yourself, what makes you think you’ll be loyal to another person?
If you’re not steadfast in what you stand for within yourself, I promise, you don’t have a hope in hell of upholding those values with anyone else.
Figuring out WHO I was and WHAT I wanted from my life felt like attempting to learn a new language. It was beyond overwhelming and HARD. I read constantly, studying what others have learned about themselves and whether or not these things resonate or apply to my own experience of life. Values clarification came up persistently throughout my reading.
Knowing your values and what you stand for can simplify things exponentially when it comes to decision making, relationships, parenting, and self-actualization.
This took time.
Retrospect and consideration of how I was currently living helped to narrow down the values that were most important to me.
When I clarified how I wanted to represent myself, it was as if I was finally navigating my life with a working compass. My decisions followed my intentions. It enabled me to TRUST myself.
I’m constantly shifting and growing. This is a painful and tiresome process at times but the reward of it is that I’ve become someone I do love. Not by affirming it to a mirror, but by diving into uncomfortable places and engaging fear, self-loathing, and hard truths.
xo,
Jen
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MSMAMACHIC 