Loving yourself doesn’t guarantee that you will be loved.

Self Love. Tricky terrain.

We can shout it: I Love my curves! I Love my crazy! I Love my attitude! All the while, we’re looking out of the corner of our eye to see if everyone else is Loving us for our curves, crazy, and ‘tude.

If *I* love me, then maybe YOU will Love me…right?

Not necessarily. Because humans are really fucked up about Love. BEAUTIFULLY, irresistibly, and understandably so messed up about it.

You can try to Love yourself in spite of not being loved the way you want(note: “spite”. Not a great phrase, already off to a bad start), “You don’t dig me? Well, I’ll show you how awesome I am!” That’s somewhat effective. Just somewhat, because you’re still going to have to get past the layers of self disdain to get to the warm center of true adoration. The Self Love Tootsie Roll. It’s in there.

You can work on loving yourself because hating yourself is utter and total hell. That’s a really good motivation, actually. Get yourself out of hell with tenderness and acknowledgement,and when you get on firm ground, throw yourself a good life party — for the rest of your life.

Sometimes, we “act” like we love ourselves so that we don’t have to change. I Love myself completely and no changes are required, I’m THAT rad. Except our spirit very much wants to change what’s not working for our lives. But we’re afraid (often misdiagnosed aslazyorarrogant) to do what it takes to change. Fake self Love can turn into a cop out for really growing.

This is my favourite Self Love mind fuck: We think that if we Love ourselves the way we are now then we’ll become better, more…loveable. This is particularly screwy because you’re going to do something tomorrow that is insecure or less than awesome (often mislabelled as selfish or stupid) and you’ll be thinking, If only I were better at loving myself, I wouldn’t be such a fuck up.

Here’s my practical suggestion on Self Love: We’re all (mostly) a bit twisted up about Love. Loving ourselves, loving each other. Illusions, attachments, de-tachments. Past lives. Soul contracts (which are burnable, by the way). It’s incredibly complicated. Just know that and proceed.

Here’s my REALLY practical suggestion that seems really impractical to the practical mind: YOU ARE LOVE. Your Soul, cells, spirit…it’s the stuff of Love (or “LIGHT”. Same thing.) Original, essence, your core. You’re Love today, you were Love yesterday, and you’ll be Love…forever.

So go easy on yourself. Really and truly, so eeeasy. Celebrate yourself no matter what — even if they think you’re tacky, terrible, too much of this, too little of that. Make how you move through the world an homage to your beautiful, luminous, powerful, magnificent, righteous, sacred…self.

That same self who may fuck up tomorrow, but will still be made of LOVE. THAT Self. Love.

Ever True,