The magical thing about life is that even tough times come with some beauty— if you choose to look for it. I decided a long time ago to stop running from it and pray, not only for grace to get through it, but to also to understand what it is trying to teach me. The past few months have been a semester of tough lessons for me, but it has brought me closer to finding myself again. More than anything has in a while.
I learned to enjoy being alone again. It allowed me to get to know and reconnect with myself, and ultimately, it helped to restore a love and respect of who I am. Love, respect, acceptance, they all start from self-love, self-respect, and self-acceptance. You can never truly feel loved unless you’ve learned to love yourself first.
In the midst of the self-love something amazing happened. A first for me. I had hidden myself many times to make room for other peoples concerns, demands and insecurities that somewhere along the way I hid so much that I actually lost myself. I realized approval from people was never worth gaining if somewhere along the way I lost myself too. So I learned to build a confidence to reject the things and people that made me think less of myself. The things that threatened the self-love and acceptance I had worked hard to create.
I’m calling it my selfish years. Even though it really isn’t. Taking care of your personal needs shouldn’t be something to feel guilty about. After all, what good am I if I am not myself. Be unapologetic about who you are. Don’t rob the world and especially yourself of your beautiful story because no one before or after you would ever be able to tell it quite like you.
Are people treating you the way you want to be treated or are you biting your tongue because you are scared of losing them? Practicing self-love will teach you when to walk away and when to let go. It will teach you to be direct about what you want and what you won’t tolerate. Choose you, pick you first, and all the things that are yours will follow.
“I speak because I think our time on earth is short and each moment that we are not our truest selves, each moment we pretend to be what we are not, each moment we say what we do not mean because we imagine that is what somebody wants us to say, then we are wasting our time on earth.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie