If you did a quick social media search for the meaning of self-love, you would be bombarded with memes, TikToks, podcasts, and tweets about what self-love is, what it isn’t, and everyday examples of how people — mostly women— aren’t practicing it. 

As a self-love advocate and creator of #WriteYourselfALoveLetterChallenge, I too, have been known to tell folks what self-love is and point out very matter-of-factly how they aren’t practicing it. I even host an annual event about it. 

But I realized something… Before you can talk about self-love and all its in and outs, we gotta talk about its phases. I believe that there are at least five phases people must go through in order to reach self-love: Unawareness, Shame & Guilt, The Struggle, Loneliness, and Acceptance. Read on to learn about each phase and then let me know what phase you’re in. 

Unawareness

Obviously, this is the first phase because our default is not to love ourselves. Our default is to love others, support others, pour into others, overextend into others, and do E V E R Y T H I N G  for others because self-love is painted as “selfish”. Aside from being painted as selfish, you may not even know why you should love yourself or if you’re even doing it at all. We typically learn about ourselves in our relations with others, which is why the unawareness phase doesn’t last long. 

Shame & Guilt

Once the unawareness phase ends, some people might find themselves in a phase of feeling shame and guilt because they realize that they haven’t been loving themselves. It becomes an “oh shit” moment and you feel guilty. Many people think accountability is berating themselves over and over for a mistake, which is why shame and guilt kick in.

“Why don’t I know how to do this already?”

“Is it too late to learn?”

“I’m such a goofy”

Those might be some thoughts and questions you have for yourself in this phase. But here’s the thing: since self-love is not our default, why are you beating yourself up for things you didn’t know? Gaining the knowledge of self-love should lead to freedom, not the bondage of shame and guilt. 

The Struggle

I never said that learning to love yourself would be easy, I just said that it’s worth it. While being in The Struggle Phase, you learn that the battle truly comes from within. You spend a majority of your life not even being aware of self-love and now you gotta do shit like set and maintain boundaries, practice self-care, AND try not to be a toxic person to others?? 

Yeah I know, easier said than done. But again, totally worth it. On the other side of the struggle is triumph and while I know we want things to come with ease, sometimes I think the adversity is necessary. Breaking old habits is hard. Adopting a new way of thinking is hard. But staying in chaotic cycles that don’t even serve you, is even harder. 

Loneliness

Nobody likes to feel lonely but a lot of times on the healing-self discovery-self love journey, it can be super isolating. You’re not what you used to accept but you may find it hard to connect with others who are on the same page as you. You may not even know where to find them. You know that you can’t heal in environments that made you sick and rather than entertain meaningless things, people, and connections, you retreat. The late great bell hooks once said, “self-love does not flourish in isolation” so I encourage you to be vocal about your journey and find people that you can journey through the loneliness with.

Acceptance

Not the final stage of course, (because practicing self-love is a continuous journey) but an important one. As I discuss in my book, one day you’ll look up and the difficulties won’t always feel like this, and the reason behind it will be because you finally learned to find acceptance.

You find acceptance in the fact that you can start over. 

You find acceptance in the fact that hard things are not impossible things. 

You’ll find acceptance in the fact that you do indeed, deserve the best things in life. 

You’ll also find acceptance in the most important part of the self-love journey --you-- whether it’s the parts you want to hide or the parts you want to embrace. You’ll find acceptance in YOU and then cultivate a life that you’d be proud to live. 

To conclude, don’t feel bad if you are struggling in between multiple phases at once. Most of us are and that’s okay! What matters is that you know self-love is a conscious choice and a daily practice. If you enjoyed this read and want more insight into the phases of self-love over good food and drinks on Sunday, July 24th, head to the link in my Instagram bio, hit WYALLC Tix, and use code loveletter22 for a discount on tickets.

Not in the Chicago area but still want to start your self-love journey? Use this link to get your self-love journal today.