already worthy

What is self love?

Self love is this statement that is often overused and hardly ever truly understood. But what I want to start off by saying is that if you have taken any actions of self love and self-care in your life you are off to a good start, if you haven't that is also OK too and you are here looking for a starting point.

To get to self love we have to get to self acceptance, to get to self acceptance we must understand self compassion to get to self compassion we must embrace vulnerability. But first you must understand that there is nothing wrong with you and there is nothing that you have to do to be worthy of self love, belonging and self acceptance.

Worth is not something you earn, it is something you have, you are born with all of your worth and you are an incredible human being with so much to offer the world.  We have been told many lies about our worthiness over the course of our life and I invite you to be open to releasing those now in this moment. You are already worthy, as you are in this moment. All those stories from other humans about needing to do something to be worthy are false. All the stories about needing to be different then you are to be successful or important or loved, they are false. We are all individuals with equal worth that shows up differently you are worthy because you are alive. There is nothing that you need to do to be worthy except know that you already are.
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Now this being yourself stuff, this knowing your enough, this being brave to be the most you you can be comes with a ton of vulnerability. Especially if when you were growing up you had people around you that dimmed your light, that told you to tone it down or that it wasn’t proper to act the way that you were acting.  These could be friends, relatives other adults in your life that had also been told you needed to be a certain way to be acceptable or successful.

A lot of my worth was tied up in the size of my body, I was worthy when I was losing weight, unworthy when I wasn’t. I was worthy when I wore spanx and found that perfect outfit that made me feel thinner, I was unworthy when I wore what was comfortable. I was worthy when a man found me attractive, I was unworthy when I didn’t have a partner or someone who wanted to be out on the dancefloor with me.

Then when I cleared that up, it became apparent that I was conditional with my worthiness in other areas. I was worthy when I had 16 people at a workshop, I was unworthy when I had two. I was worthy when my husband and I had a heartfelt conversation, I was unworthy when he didn’t give me the reaction that I wanted. I was worthy when I got invited to the party, I was unworthy when I felt like I was purposefully missed.  I had/have so much of my identity tied up in how I look, who loved me, who cared that I forgot about the inherit worthiness that I was born with.

How this began to change for me, when I decided to take a big step and do something that had never been done before, open a wellness center that was for everyone regardless of body size with me as the spokesperson. This was incredibly difficult for me because of the vulnerability that came with it. I exposed myself to ridicule, to judgment, to the naysayers and the most difficult of all, accepting that I was in fact a woman of size that also stood for wellness and that both those things could be true together. I knew that I wasn’t going to be “for” everyone, but the reasons for putting myself out there outweighed the reasons to not put myself out there. I had to push through those awful, uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability because it was important to me.

So that is the first question that I have for you, when it comes to self acceptance, self love, is: Why is this important to you? You have to ask yourself this question and really know the answer or else it will never be important enough to start working on. The reason why has to be stronger then the fear or else you simply will not do it.

Take some time and contemplate this for yourself and feel free to post in the comments about it.