I will love myself when _____.

Please take a moment to fill in this blank & use as many bullet points as you need. What conditions do you put on loving yourself?

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I thought I’d love myself when I:

• became a parent (I only hated myself more)
• lost 50 lbs (then it became 10 more)
• found love with a partner (then I still found myself single)
• completed another race or PR’ed (an endless pursuit of races it then becomes)
• passed my certification test (no, I then felt shame for the pride in my own accomplishment)
• reached a certain level of spirituality (then I would raise the bar again)

So now that I’m recognizing many of the “conditions of my parole” and how they’re harming me, I see it’s time to stop the conditional love. It’s now time to bless myself with the grace of my own Agape Love; the same Love, validation and approval that I have spent most of my life seeking from others.

What loving me now means is being my own friend. Eventually I’d like to be my own BFF, yet right now friend is a good place to start. No longer can I avoid withhholding loving myself for all of my “good and bad” bits. Or as Carl Jung says “sensical and non-sensical” parts. 

So now I ask, what will it take for you to love you?

Namaste : the light and shadow in me honor the light and shadow in you. 

This is part of the Own Your Own Shadow Series, an investigation into seeing and integrating all aspects within to recover inner peace. Only with loving ourselves can we be the change we wish to see in this world.