How I learnt to love myself

Today I am getting real and putting myself out there while low key hoping nobody reads this.

I am talking self love and where it started for me. I am no expert and I can only speak from my own experience - but hopefully you will find something here that you can relate to. My journey with self love is one of the things that makes up the foundation of More Than Pretty.

Self love was something I had to learn to do. 

For me it started when I eventually found myself face to face with myself and I did not like what I saw. After years of being in survival mode, the facade finally collapsed and now I was sitting with nothing but myself, and I hated her, mostly because I didn’t know her at all. 

When I was young people would often smile and comment that I was pretty. So quite early on that kind of became it for me. I became desperate not to lose my “pretty” because it seemed to make people like me. In the midst of a complicated childhood - I thought that my prettiness was the one thing I could control.  It was my lifeline. Outside affirmation was everything, I was always trying to be skinny, I was always trying to be good enough for the front row and anything anyone said to me - I would carry with me for years. I remember everything, from the boy in Grade 7 who told me I was ugly -to the ballet teacher who told me at 20 that I would never “make it” - I carried it all.

I loved to dance and I ended up studying performing arts but looking back now - performing arts was the last place that a girl with no confidence should have been. It was no place for someone whose whole being rested on the approval of others and a few years in the industry did some real damage to my self esteem.

So I already had loads of ammunition to take myself down, and after some personal loss in 2019, I found myself in a dark place. One of those places that only you can save yourself from. But as I looked at myself I saw a girl that was broken and empty with nothing to cling to. She had no idea who she was or what she needed. None of the lead roles or jobs landed or compliments from strangers did her any good. And that is when I learnt something that changed my life…

“You are not your thoughts, You are the awareness of my thoughts”.

What a wild statement. I heard it in an Oprah Super Soul Sundays podcast (yes I know, we are no longer team Oprah) and it made my mind spin.

So if I am here, looking at this broken girl - she can’t be me right? Because I am me. And if she isn’t me then I can help her. And that is where self love truly started with me. When I looked at myself, hated what I saw but embraced and loved her anyway. I decided that this broken girl could do better and I wasn’t going to give up on her.

So I started a relationship with myself. And by that I mean that I learned to actively treat it as a relationship. I talked to myself out loud and regularly -  with kindness and A LOT of compliments. If you have been around for a while you know that I swear by the post it notes filled with affirmations that I stuck around my home. I made promises to myself AND I kept them and I showed up for me every single day and started figuring out who I actually was when I wasn’t looking for outside approval. I held myself accountable, apologised to myself and built resilience. I stopped waiting and I fought for myself in a way that I always wanted someone to fight for me.

And it was not an easy fight - for years I felt (and sometimes I still do) like I was walking on a balancing beam and a gush of wind could come along and wipe me out any second. Some days it was just me clinging to that beam for dear life. Those days were tough but they were also the days that taught me to say “no”. When I chose staying on the beam alone rather than risking a fall to be there for someone else I taught myself that when I need to, I CAN put myself first. Believe it or not - there was a time when choosing myself and letting someone else down would have me crippled with anxiety.

Self love is not an easy journey and it truly is a never ending one. It is deep and complex and what I shared here doesn’t even scratch the surface. We didn’t even get to therapy or medication - sometimes we need a little help staying on the beam.

If you have read this far - thank you. This was a tough share and yet I still feel like haven’t shared anything. I hope this is a post that will find it’s way to whoever needs it. 

Don’t give up on yourself.