Self-Loathing to Self-Love
I have always been wide-hipped and thick thighed, noticeable since I was single-digits years old and more so as I hit puberty and adolescence and could see that my body was not built like my best friends’ bodies. One time my mom’s friend made a comment about my size in front of me, and later I cried into my mom’s arms that she “had to love me” the way I am. The seed of self-loathing was sown.
The spring of 1988, however, I was a freshman at University of Washington and quite fit from all the walking and water aerobics I was doing at the time. One afternoon, I was walking home to my dorm with my roommate, and a bunch of football players were standing in front of the doors, loudly rating the legs of all the young women walking by. I was mortified as she passed their test, and I failed...nothing more than garbage in their eyes.
Whyyyyy couldn’t I be better looking?
As I saw myself reduced to the package used to house my soul during this lifetime, I saw nothing redeeming. I was not pleasing to the eye; therefore, I was not worthy.
It’s not true, of course. But these memories have clouded my perception of who I am, and I let them. For years I stored “I am not worthy because I don’t look like other people” inside of me. It hurt. It was like walking around with a pebble in my shoe for years, causing blisters, pain, ruining my socks, and eventually my shoes too.
A few years ago, I decided to take the shoe off, shake the pebble out, and go on with my life. It sounds so simple, but I didn’t know how to do it for the longest time.
It started with taking a Reiki class. My homework included journaling, meditating, and daily self-reiki, and I made them part of my daily practice for ...well, let’s see...today is Day 1,322, give or take a few. This is important because meditating helps one to focus inward, sometimes on things we don’t want to see, and be okay with it for a short period of time. (True disclosure: some of my meditations were only 2 minutes long to start my day, but they all count because it’s about practice.) Journaling gave me an outlet to write down things that made me uncomfortable, as well as things I wanted to celebrate, and things I didn’t want to forget. Self-reiki is a practice of channeling love-light energy from the Divine and focusing it on energy centers, or chakras to bring them to a state of homeostasis, or balance.
When I started listening to an audiobook by Matt Kahn, who taught me how to love better, I had tools in place to be able to hear and practice what he was saying.
If I haven’t lost you yet, here is the key: LOVE YOURSELF. He said that the key to loving better, and more fully is to love yourself first. Go to those parts of yourself filled with shame and guilt and self-pity and focus all your love on those dark places within you, because you deserve more love, not less. You have to do it, though. Nobody is going to come on a white stallion, scoop you up, and love you where you need it most because you have built a wall of shame around those parts, and the only person who can get to them is YOU!
We ALL deserve more love, not less.
When I was able to spend time closing my eyes, reaching the tender parts of me that had festering sores for years/decades and give them reiki healing and imagine them as me, longing for a hug and reassurance instead of condemnation, I was able to heal those spots. (I was able to heal enough so they aren’t hidden in shame, and I can publish about those old insecurities in a blog to be read by people I’ve never met, and worse, people I have met!)
And do you know what the magical thing about healing these parts of myself has been? By giving myself the love and grace that I have yearned for all these years, I am more able to give love and grace to others freely. The part of me that was so judgmental of others is not nearly the beast she once was. I’ve nearly loved the life out of her! And when I find something new that triggers a reaction in me, I’ve found a new place inside of me that needs some TLC.
It’s a process, but so worth it.
