The Best Love: Ways to Start Your Self-Love Journey in 2022
Photo by Julia Avamotive from Pexels
Self-love is not easy, especially if your whole life you’ve been programmed to love the world instead. Or if you’ve been told to forgo that second or third plate. Or if feelings of unworthiness have just been downright innate. Self-care isn’t a walk in the park either. For many women, especially Black women, both concepts are new. Self-care is the way in which we care for ourselves. Preserve our mental, emotional and physical health. It’s the things we do, big and small, to keep us as our best selves.
Practicing self-care is an action-oriented way that we show ourselves self-love. And self-love? It’s exactly what it sounds like - the best love. It means loving all aspects of yourself, accepting your beauty AND your ugly, your strengths AND your weaknesses as well as the things you don’t always like about yourself. It is about holding yourself accountable and holding high standards for your own well-being and happiness.
Self-love ain’t selfish. Yet still… many of us feel guilt and shame when we create our own practices. As if we should always be machines turned on. As if hitting the ‘off’ switch is so inexcusable. If you are new to loving yourself this year, welcome. You are in for a beautiful, ugly, messy and sacred journey. You will go to mountaintops and sing your own praises. You will descend into valleys and cry through your own healing. You will meet other people that are mirrors for what was true all along... that you’re worth everything and more.
Indeed, the journey is full of uncertainty, not knowing what you’ll uproot or have to finally reckon with. Tumultuous in that you have to work at it and being okay with feeling lonely sometimes or messing up along the way. But all the while, magnificent because on the other side is you.
Be willing to focus on your pain and own your feelings
What patterns continue to resurface for you? Are they serving you or suffocating you? Are they still making you bleed? Within reason, move toward your wounds rather than running away from them. All of them are informational, and they’re trying to tell you something. And perhaps, this time.. a simple band aid won’t work. If this process is too much, then don’t do it alone. Consider reaching out to a professional.
Move towards your wounds willing to learn… not judge
The darkest parts of ourselves are not easy to greet. Our past. Our mistakes. None of it ever will be. But instead of overflowing with negative self-talk, remember that you did and can only do the best you can with what you know. You know more now, so you can do more now.
Learn about your limiting beliefs and sense of unworthiness
Who did it? Who told you that? Where was it? And why? Have compassion when you ask yourself these questions, and notice what immediately comes up when you ask.
Scoop up an old childhood picture and keep it close
This is your inner child, and this who you can talk to from now on when old feelings and patterns resurface. What would you tell her now?
Greet everything and everyone as if they’re a lesson to be learned
Because they are. Whether it is a lesson about the type of people you are attracted to or a reflection of the traits you need to work on within yourself, every opportunity and person that arises in your life is also a message being delivered to you. Whatever it is, pick up the phone baby. Answer it. Text back. Send a voice message. Just don’t leave it on ‘Read’.
Discover who you are RIGHT now
Do you ever look back and think something like, “What happened to THAT girl?” You changed. That’s what happened. And it’s not a bad thing. It may be an uncomfortable thing right now. But, nonetheless, you changed. So, who are you RIGHT now? Find some self-discovery journal prompts and figure it out. And let me be the first to tell you… I think both versions are great.
Remember no one lights a lamp to tuck it away. It’s you. You’re the lamp, sis. You’re the light. So despite how weird this new journey can feel. Despite the discomfort, let your light shine. After all, you deserve to be seen.
Adia R. Louden is a first-year doctoral student in Maternal and Child Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
