My goal is to make self love and self care tactics that are easy and actionable so you can start right away. To do this, every post has 3 sections and they're skippable, or not. Your time is valuable, so you skip to the section you can connect to.
Every post is in three short (mostly!) sections:
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A short introduction on why I’m writing about that topic
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A personal anecdote (maybe you can relate!)
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A list of to-dos to fill your life with more self love
Keep in mind that everything I write about is subjective. This is a personal journey just like any other relationship.
Read these entries with an open and joyful heart. Small changes you make today will help feed your soul, help you become more present, brighten your outlook, increase your compassion, and increase your happiness.
Or at least that’s the goal! ❤️
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What do I know?
Okay, this is the most I’ll talk about myself, I promise. But this is why I find self love so important.
You know that old adage, ‘those who can’t do, teach’ well I spent my years from high school to 24 doing the exact opposite of self love.
First off, I hated my body. Just like every other high school teen I was constantly going on diets, shaming myself, and letting conversations happen around me about other people’s bodies. I was in a sick cycle of abusing food, starving myself, forcing workouts, and verbally assaulting myself in the mirror. The partners I had during these years did nothing to help, and in fact, they would trigger these habits. In one particular relationship, it was the guilt of ‘my ex got fat’ that made me paranoid about food. I had the constant thought that he would stop loving me if I gained weight or ate unhealthy. At one point I was secretly buying single serve cupcakes and eating them outside our house in my car, discarding the garbage at work the next day.
Not only was I unhealthy, I was mentally unhealthy. And I was years away from coming to love my body, not to mention myself.
Secondly, I never put myself first. In fact, I’d most likely be living in New York right now if I had put myself first. In my opinion, the most important blog post you can read is about setting boundaries. I don’t go deep into it in the post, but I was the absolute worst at setting boundaries between myself and my loved ones. In my relationships I would put their needs above my own, so much so that I almost failed a couple of college courses because of it. At the time I would let my partners bully or guilt me into sacrificing my time for them. And in a lot of cases this was masked by ‘you don’t love me if you don’t spend time with me’. It can be hard when you live a very busy life to make time for your loved ones, but it’s equally as important to make time for yourself. I didn’t realize this until I realized how glorious having alone time could be.
Lastly, I let society dictate how I could feel about myself. There was a moment, I’m not exactly sure when, where I looked at myself in the mirror and thought ‘I’m fucking awesome’ and I didn’t feel guilty about it. It was a very long road to get to this place, where I didn’t feel like I should feel bad for loving myself. Because for whatever reason, society doesn’t want us to feel good. So we’re taught to find imperfections, to not have too much confidence, and to not only judge ourselves but others. When I found self love, I found a new way of looking at the world around me. I no longer concerned myself with other people’s actions or choices, because I was secure in my own. Instead I could focus on loving the people around me more.
When you love yourself truly and fully, you can love others truly and fully. You can reflect the love you have for yourself, outward to your friends, your partners, your community, and the world. When we have more self love, our world becomes more loving.