“After a lifetime of wanderlust and homesickness, I finally found the home I was looking for everywhere: it was within myself, where it had been waiting all along. I was my own anchor, my own safe haven.”
With the arrival of Spring, I have felt the calling to meditate over the theme of regeneration, renewal and healing – and the importance of selfcare and self love practices in one’s journey of healing. And from experience, I know that healing begins with allowing yourself to be open, vulnerable, to accept help, to confront what was and what is, in order to move on to what can be. It’s the only way to stop living in the past and being haunted by old wounds, traumas, heartaches, relationships.
Vulnerability is never easy, but over the years I have learned that vulnerability is so incredibly powerful. It has the power to break down barriers. It begins as a seed of potential and has the power to transform lives, to inspire others to start anew, to take steps into new directions never considered before.
All because vulnerability means we lower our masks, and let our true selves shine through. It requires a certain level of honesty and bravery that personally, my teenage self would not have guessed in a hundred years that I’d be comfortable doing.
And yet here I am, 3-4 years later after beginning my journey of self love & healing, and I am so, so grateful for how far I’ve come. And so, in honor of Spring and our incredible power to grow anew likewise, I want to share my story with you.
Everybody’s journey of self-love is different, but the first step is to begin. And as someone who’s been there, struggling with anxiety and lacking security in my identity, I can safely say it gets better. Self love changes everything. Everything, in the best ways.
It changes how you view yourself and by extension it changes how you view life and the act of living. And when you know you deserve the world you will stop tolerating those who believe you deserve anything less.
But how did I get here? I chose to take the first step. I’d come to a point where I knew it wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and I decided enough, this needs to change. Yes, it took time, years in my case but everybody’s progress is different.
I chose it day by day, by first of all removing anything that was enforcing that negativity, upholding it or even holding me back from growing as a person. This meant releasing my hold on an idealized past self – my first and hardest challenge in the journey. Instead of offering any love to my (present) self, I was nostalgically pouring it into an idealized illusion.
Removing negativity also meant letting go of old friendships, relationships, people I thought I could never let go of, but which were keeping me stuck in that mindset. But I did cut them off, because at that point the choice was so easy. I valued my health and wellbeing more than the idea of keeping them in my life despite anything. It also meant moving on from situations, jobs, circumstances which hindered my development.
Their absence did not leave a bitter, aching emptiness as I’d feared. It was the complete opposite. Peace, relief, fulfillment, a deep calm that only comes with staying kind and true to yourself. I embraced what had felt like emptiness at first but later realized as space for growth.
I filled that space with positive, fruitful seeds: constantly exposing myself to body positivity (blogs that promoted this healthy mindset, images of the natural body sans make-up, digital editing or filters, people of all shapes, sizes and colors being happy in their skin as they go about their daily lives being fabulous), reading books or poetry (ie. Emery Allen) that promoted self love or self care, and so on…
I began to be passionate about all forms of selfcare, whether it was physical (skin & haircare, exercise, diet), emotional (being assertive about my needs, boundaries, desires, feelings, having the appropriate responses to people that crossed those limits) & mental (knowing when to stop and wind down and relax, meditate, perform introspection over any anger, hurt, etc, always working through it patiently and lovingly), spiritual…
Doing all of these things became synonymous with self love. Eat healthy because your body deserves the best, examine and work through that pain because you deserve to heal and be happy, etc.
All of these things helped bring me to where I am today, a point in which self love has become effortless, an instinct, a natural need that I nurture and give to myself unconditionally – because I’m worth it. It is now part of my daily routine, part of my mindset. It is ingrained into my habits because each morning I wake up consciously choosing to live my life in alignment with my heart & soul, and not against it.
I now understand that living your life warring with yourself is not a way, was never a way, to live your life. Don’t you see – you can’t declare yourself the enemy and expect to win.
You can’t declare yourself the enemy and expect to win.
Making peace with who you are, what you look like, what your fears and vulnerabilities are, every single detail that makes up the YOU that you are right now – they are all perfect as they are, even in that complicated “perfectly imperfect” way because that is how society has ingrained our beliefs. But all those aspects of you can be simultaneously “perfect(ly imperfect)”, while you still strive to better yourself in any way you can. They’re not mutually exclusive.
In other words, you don’t have to hate yourself, reject yourself, or deny yourself of any love until you reach some subjective, illusory universal notion of “perfection”, because that doesn’t exist. To the universe itself, everything in existence is flawless as it is, a masterpiece in motion. It was conceived from stardust as such by design. Flowers don’t worry over their symmetry, nor animals over their spots, or clouds over their curves. They simply embody the fullness of their being, whatever that may be. They don’t apologize for the space they take up, or shrink in order to fit a certain arbitrary ideal. They relax into their being, contributing to the garden of diversity found on this Earth. Imagine in they all looked the same, same colors, same sizes, same shapes? Wouldn’t that just rob this world of so much beauty and excitement?
Likewise, you are allowed to be a work in progress. And every work of art takes time to be created, right? You are allowed to be anything and everything you want, and you can always recreate yourself until you feel at home in your own heart, in your own mind, in your own body and soul.
So, my angels, my masterpieces. After a lifetime of wanderlust and homesickness, I have finally found the home I was looking for everywhere: it was within myself, where it had been waiting all along. I was my own anchor, my own safe haven.
And I hope your journey back to yourself is just as soulful, gentle and fulfilling. You deserve to find a home within yourself too.
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