Before Self Love

What would you say to someone you’ve never met before and who just walked up to you and said: “do you love me?” I would imagine your answer would range from “Get away from me!” To... “No! I’ve never met you!” To... “Of course, I love all people!” (in a highly evolved of-course-I-don’t-want-you-to-get-hit-by-a-bus kinda way but you’re not gonna go run away with them.

Love is built over time.

It’s built through trust and proximity. Familiarity and intimacy.

It’s not something that just IS. It’s something you do.

As they say, Love is a verb.

So... in the age of self-love and self-care... how can we begin to love ourselves if we’ve never spent the time to get to know ourselves? Really know ourselves intimately.

Who are you outside of your social, familial, and cultural conditioning? Who are you with them?

What would your life look like if you weren’t trying to be something for someone else?

When was the last time you stopped to ask yourself what YOU want?

What do you want? Like? Dream of?

What gives you energy or depletes it?

If you don’t know yourself... how are you supposed to love yourself?

If I strip it all down to the basics, that's what my work is all about. It’s about getting to the roots of you. The heart of you. Unearthing you from the piles of stuff the world has heaped upon you. Spending time getting to know yourSelf.

Then, slowly, from this of familiarity, then learning to love what you find. Piece by piece. The beautiful parts, the rejected parts, the broken parts, the dark parts, the unique parts, and the neglected parts. They are all parts of you. They all deserve love. They all deserve attention, a voice at the table, and respect. They don’t all get to lead ... but we’ll get to that later.

But they do deserve to be acknowledged. Hugged. And understood.

All of you is welcome here.

Have you met you?