Hey y’all!!

For my returning readers, I see you! To my new readers, I’m so glad you chose to stop by!

In the words of our great sis, the late Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock), what’s love got to do with it? Honey, EVERYTHING!

Love is the foundation. It’s how we connect to God and his people. It’s how we stay sane when everything is crumbling around us. Love is and always will be the answer.

When you hear the word love, you think of familial, platonic, and romantic relationships. What’s missing? The relationship you have with yourself. That’s the most important one! Someone told me you can only love others to the extent you love yourself. That thang hurt my feelings. I wondered why my relationships were toxic, unfulfilling, and unreceptive, and it was because those relationships were a reflection of how I treated myself.

Before I dive too deep, love is a vast subject and for me to be able to say all of what I have to say, this blog is going to be done in parts. Y’all this is my first series!

NOW LISTEN!! Don’t come for me if the subsequent blogs are not posted in days or weeks of each other, life is really life’n and it takes me some time to get my thoughts together so please be patient with me OKURT!

Everybody have their notebooks out.

Part 1: Self-Love Ain’t Selfish

Self-love is hard!

Why?

Because most of the time you love yourself based on how people love you. One more time for the people in the back… most of the time you love yourself based on how people love you. It stings I know but let’s keep it a buck!

When I started the process of learning how to love myself, I had to admit that I didn’t know how. My definition of love was a transactional exchange between people.

With that definition and mindset, retail therapy was how I showed myself love. I made small and large purchases; depending on how down I felt determined the type of purchase I made. It wasn’t until somebody told me “You can only love others to the extent you love yourself” that I realized I needed to reevaluate some things.

Thank God for therapy! Had my definition not changed, I would have so much stuff and so little love.

What Loving Me Looks Like

For me, self-love is the ability to show myself compassion, show up for myself, support my needs and wants, and honor my limitations.

To get to that definition, I had to accept every part of myself. Yes, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I had to take a deep look at all the aspects of the human I am and forgive the parts of myself that I deemed bad, wrong, and/or unlovable.

Now let’s be clear, depending on where you are in your journey, self-love may mean something totally different to you. That’s okay, this is about how YOU love yourself. You have to start somewhere.

Regardless, self-love is a necessity not a nicety. Being able to define love for yourself allows you to define how you love others and how they love you.

Becoming Self-full

Self-compassion is a learned and practiced skill. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes practice. Practice makes what?

Improvement!

Absolutely – nothing is perfect, and you can always better your best.

Feel First, Flex Later

Listen, as the melanated multitude we are not empowered to express or show emotion. Especially when the emotion is considered weak. Let me just go ahead and tell you, UNLEARN THAT ish!

It’s not healthy, it’s not normal, and it’s counterintuitive. You have two choices: either you feel it, or it will fill you. Pent-up emotions are the top reason why people, especially us, stress out, stroke out, have insomnia, can’t eat, overeat, a list of ailments and illnesses, all because we’ve trained ourselves to bury emotions, thinking that makes them go away.

Fren, it doesn’t they are still there. Learn to acknowledge what you feel. Here’s an example, you’ve been single for years and on this particular day, you feel lonely. Instead of giving yourself a hype man speech, or a self-critic, you can acknowledge dang, I feel lonely, and it doesn’t feel good. Once you acknowledge it, make a plan to change how you feel when you’re ready.

You are not the only one who has “bad/negative” feelings. Knowing that, give yourself compassion and grace. This a good way to support yourself.

You Good?

It is so important to do a daily check-in with yourself.

This conversation can look different every day. There may be days you want to isolate yourself. You want to read a good book, put your phone on DND, crawl into bed, watch a movie, or let a movie watch you. That’s okay – that’s what you need in that moment.

There will be days you want to be surrounded by family and friends. You feel social and you want to fill your cup by engaging with other folks and getting positive vibes. Beautiful.

The important part of this concept is to recognize that you need something and defining what that is. It doesn’t have to be complicated; it can be as simple as ordering take out because you don’t feel like cooking.

If that seems like too much too fast, start by setting your intentions at the start of your day. What’s the tone of your day and how do you want to show up? Or start the day journaling to find out what you’re missing.

However you do it, just make sure you’ve checked in and have an idea of what you need.

No.

I’ve said this previously in one of my other blogs, no is a complete sentence. Use it more often.

One of the biggest problems with us, black women specifically, we take care of everybody all the time and forget we need to take care of ourselves.

Every time you say yes to someone else’s priorities over your own, you do yourself a disservice because you are telling yourself, I can wait, their needs are more important.

It is more than okay to tell someone let me get back to you on that. Or simply, no I can’t make that commitment. You deserve to prioritize yourself. Like I said at the beginning, self-love is a necessity.

If that doesn’t resonate, maybe this will, you can’t take care of others when you don’t take care of yourself.

I Said What I Said – Lovingly

Ladies let’s stop normalizing the idea that people are supposed to read our minds and know what we want without us asking. That’s an unrealistic expectation.

You know what you want, how you want to be treated, and your limitations but do they? If not, communicate that. Once you communicate that, they can now be held accountable to respect your wishes and boundaries.

There will be times when people test your boundaries and test their limits. That is a perfect opportunity for you to practice self-love and lovingly express how you feel and what needs to change moving forward.

Relationships with people can be tricky and uncomfortable at times. It’s just part of life; but as you love yourself more, you will begin to choose you.

Drink Your Water and Mind Your Business…

Self-love is the why, self-care is the how.

When you are loving on yourself, taking deliberate action to care for your emotional, mental, and physical health is part of the deal.

Here are my favorite ways to self-care:

1. Emotional self-care: THERAPY, THERAPY, THERAPY! It’s underrated but so necessary. Learning how to acknowledge, identify, and process emotions in a healthy way helped me tremendously. If therapy isn’t an option pick up a journal and write it out. If that isn’t enough, talk it out with someone you trust.
2. Mental self-care: Find hobbies. Do something you enjoy. My favorite is to read a good book. Also, I thoroughly enjoy a good meditation. Being present and finding the peace within resets your mind.
3. Physical self-care: Be active. Move your body. Eat a balanced diet and drink your water. Prioritize getting a good night’s rest. Your physical health is linked to your mental well-being.

Self-love is intentional. It’s the way in which you create space for all of you and how you teach people to love you. You are always the blueprint. Showing self-compassion, feeling what you feel, checking in with yourself, setting boundaries, and practicing self-care are some of the ways you show up for and support yourself. This is the start to building and living a fulfilling life.

I’ll say it again; self-love is a necessity not a nicety.

Healing is a journey; you choose where you want to go.

I love y’all 🤟