Self-Love. It is a badge of honor to have a lot of this. It is said to be the greatest type of love to have, that when you love yourself— I mean ALL of yourself, your confidence level is on 1,000. You’re always aware of what you be doing. You set and maintain boundaries, you cut off any dead weight or toxic person that brings more pain than peace. And all of these things are true, because in the name of self-love, we deserve to reach our best selves daily. In spite of flaws. In spite of the messages we have internalized about ourselves. In spite of the fuck shit we do to ourselves.As an unofficial self-love coach, I want y’all to understand this one thing about me: I still struggle with this shit too. I still struggle with not only acknowledging my flaws but holding myself accountable about them too. I struggle with the ways I treat my mind, body, and spirit when I don’t FEEL like loving myself, cuz that’s a real thing.Truth be told, I think self-love has a deep and scary side to it, it’s not all shits and giggles at all. You simultaneously need to know how to thrive in both the light and the darkness to be your best self.In self-love, we speak a lot on letting go of toxic people and things, but what if I told you that YOU are the toxic person that you need to let go? Then what?What if I told you that YOU are the reason for your self sabotage?What if I told you that you’re the one that’s actually addicted to chaos and it’s not the other way around?What if I told you that when you ignore the signs your mind, body, and spirit is telling you, you’re the reason for your own self destruction?What if I told you that the reason why we don’t really wanna dive into the dark side of self love is because not only is the shit scary, it’s lonely too?And nobody likes to be lonely. Nobody likes to be misunderstood. As individualistic as we are, we still want to feel connected to our friends and family. No one likes to be SEEN as an other, I don’t care what anyone says.Other spooky sides of self-love include:

Falling Apart To Get Back Together

The metamorphosis process is painful. It has literally felt like my heart was breaking or my literally skin was shedding. It hurts seeing the old you go. Cuz now you have to get to know this “new” person (who isn’t REALLY new, they were always inside of you, they just had to be manifested and nurtured) and the new person you are may seem a bit unfamiliar to you. It’s like you are constantly reintroducing yourself to your family, friends, coworkers, etc. Each time you discover something new about yourself you then have to either build upon who you already are or completely start over.

Accountability

I think this is the scariest part for ME. It’s like you get to the point where you can name all your problems and you’re super self aware but then what? Accountability is spooky AF because it actually forces you to do shit. We want all our problems to solve themselves but we know we can’t truly grow if we don’t put that work in.

Sometimes We Don’t Want To Put The Work In

Speaking of work, we know that doing the work of self-love is... exhausting to say the least. Sometimes I don't wanna be self-aware. Sometimes I wanna give in to my toxic desires. Sometimes I wanna ignore my intuition. Its a lot of work to love yourself, no matter how worth it, it is. 

Moral of the story, yeah self-love is spooky... but like Will Smith once said, everything we want is on the other side of fear.

1. What areas do you struggle in when it comes to self-love?
2. Is it okay to desire certain things from certain people yet NOT act on them?
3. What scares you the most when it comes to self-love?
4. How are you pushing past that fear anyway?