What kind of woman are you blossoming into?With the scent of roses and taste of fine chocolates tempting our senses as Valentine’s Day approaches us this week, I thought we could have a little chat about self love; because whether you find yourself thriving, plateauing or struggling in a relationship, flirtationship or solo-ship, when it comes to romance, the offer of self love is always on the table. Having spent many-a-Valentine’s Day flying solo, I’ve had my ups and downs over the years with this day that, putting commercialism aside, is supposed to be about celebrating romantic love and partnership. The thing is, I love - Love! A romantic at heart, any chance to celebrate love, and life for that matter, I get super excited about. There’s been times I’ve been depressed to not have a partner to celebrate with because I felt like I was missing out on something, other times I’ve pretended I didn’t care and let the day go by, ignoring the emotions that really did want to come up to be seen because I didn’t want to feel the pain of what I thought it meant to be alone, and more lighthearted years where I’ve celebrated the spirit of love with other independent girlfriends. Through the many emotions this day has seen over the years, what I can say is that the path to self love isn’t necessarily an easy one. Often we aren’t even aware of how critical we are of ourselves until we start to take the journey inward to heal. When you set the intention to start shining the light of love on yourself, in the same way you would shine that same light onto others in your life, we start to become aware of how separated we’ve been from the love that already exists within us. Everything that is what I like to call “not-love” comes up to be seen. Most people in the spiritual world say that the opposite of love is fear. However, I believe the opposite of love is “not-love”, in other words, the withholding of love. Fear is actually the symptom that arises as we take on the belief that some part of us in unloveable. A belief that becomes imprinted onto us when we have an experience where love is withheld. When we feel rejected, unheard, unseen, or when our boundaries for physical, emotional or intellectual safety are violated. The more experiences of “not love” we are on the receiving end of, particularly in our developmental years, the more convinced we become of our lack of worth and the more we fear to show our true selves to the world. These experiences lead us down the path of developing many different coping patterns to help us deal with the pain. It’s all very innocent and this is something we ALL experience. So please know, you are not alone and you haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t mean to fall into these patterns. It’s often not even in our awareness that we are caught in them because it is just a normal part of our journey of being human. It is these experiences of “not-love” that cause us to forget who we truly are. It doesn’t take long to learn how to hide both the best and worst parts of ourselves from others in order to gain acceptance. The good news is, as we cycle through the seasons of our life and start paying attention to what life is trying to teach us, we start to see the areas within ourselves that are needing a little extra snuggle. You can start to show yourself what it means for all of you, yes, ALL of you, to be lifted up by love. WE ONLY HEAL IN THE PRESENCE OF LOVE. Love holds space for both our positive characteristics and our quirks, our enjoyable emotions and our difficult emotions, our clarity and our confusion, our strengths and our weaknesses, our successes and our failures our rights and our wrong-doings. Love holds space for it all. When we lean into self love, there is a peace that happens. It can be difficult at first to turn towards the parts of ourselves that we have been taught to withhold love from, but it does get easier with time, I promise. It’s the most rewarding journey of self discovery that you can go on. The beautiful thing is, once you start to shine the light of love into all of the nooks and crannies within yourself that have been starving for love for so long, your Soul starts to shine a bit brighter. This is the thing about the spiritually human journey we are on together, we are all desperately trying to remember the presence of love that already exists within us. We’ve each been given our own unique path of breadcrumbs to follow and lessons to learn to get back to this simple truth. That you are Love. Not all that long ago, I asked myself - “What does self worth feel like?” The first answer I received was - “Appreciation”. The second answer was - “Acceptance”. As you explore what self love means to you this Valentine’s Day, try asking yourself: What is it that you could really appreciate about yourself? What parts of you are easy to love? Then, if you are feeling safe enough within yourself to step a little further down this path, start to look for the parts of you that were once on the receiving end of “not love”. How are they doing? What do they need from you? What would it be like to shine the light of love on these parts of you and finally give them the love they have always deserved? The first step on any journey of self discovery and inner healing is to create enough safety within yourself to go exploring. We create this safety by cultivating a presence of self love and self acceptance to accompany us along the way. As you learn to appreciate and accept all of what makes you, YOU, start to get curious about this . . . What kind of woman are you blossoming into? With Love, Kristen XO Please share with anyone who may need to hear these words right now.
May we all support one another to uplift the heart of our world to greater experiences of love, health & harmony. If you want to learn how to connect with your inner wisdom to guide you on your journey of self discovery and inner healing, so you can shine the unique spark of light you came here to shine in this world with more confidence, compassion and ease, start by joining the Soul Inspired Community Membership. It's free! Click here to join the journey. Comments are closed.
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Kristen BraidGuiding & supporting you to live a Soul Inspired Life so we can uplift the heart of our world to a greater experience of love, health & harmony. Archives
February 2024
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