Learning to Love Yourself When You Didn’t Grow Up With It

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

How to Open Yourself to Love When You Didn’t Grow Up with It
Tiny Buddha Blog

I went to the store to buy some cigarettes and the lady at the counter asked me for some identification. I handed it over and she said to me “It’s your birthday today. You look so young. Your mother should be very proud of you.”

It was such a flippant statement, but for some reason it struck a chord. After all my years of therapy, these words from a stranger hit home. I can’t really explain it, but I felt a whole hoard of emotions: anger, regret, understanding, and, finally, relief.

I felt that, yes, my mother should be proud of me—and I felt sorry for her that she was unable to feel that way.

I wanted to have a chance at life, to meet someone and have my own children that I could love and be proud of. I realized then that this would only happen if I stopped treating myself the same way my mother did.

Cheerio Road: How do you mother yourself?

So my question is not how you parent the people you undoubtedly love the most, but rather, how do you mother yourself? Because there are not two ways.

• Are you kind and forgiving?
• Do you give yourself quiet attention?
• Permission to play?
• Discipline to work?
• The confidence to do things by yourself?
• Are you honest with yourself?
• Do you encourage yourself to go outside?
• To take a breath?
• To try again?
• To take risks?
• To be silly?
• Are you hurrying toward some imagined milestone?
• Do you undermine yourself with constructive criticisms?
• Are you undisturbed by your apparent lack of progress?
• Are you tender, careful and trusting with yourself?
• Do you comfort fears, or magnify them?
• Do you nourish yourself?
• Laugh at yourself?
• Smile in greeting each day?
• Do you abandon yourself to preoccupations with the past?
• Do you make new friends and forgive the old?
• Do you allow that the world is entirely your own and encourage self-mastery?
• Do you sleep when tired and eat when hungry?
• Take a bath and splash?
• Do you let yourself rant and cry for no good reason and then coax yourself back into the familiar cushion of your very own lap?
• Do you tell yourself you are a wonderful mother and a beautiful daughter? Then let me be the first, and not the last.

How do you mother yourself?

How to Nurture Yourself & Be Your Own Mother | Crazy Sexy Life

The beautiful thing about becoming this presence to myself is how much it’s enabled me to gift others with this love, to be that generous stranger for another, to be that lightning rod for my friends, family, clients, and students. I’ve turned some of my private ache into public service. I have even learned to mother my mother, a rag tag child herself, lost at sea in judgments, opinions, and injuries I will never completely know. Sometimes I do not feel appreciated or seen by her, but I am always appreciated and seen by me.

This month, think of nurturing yourself as your responsibility. Buy yourself a small gift or token of gratitude and support. Thank people in your life for their tenderness and kindness. The world is full of dynamite mothers, including you.

 

[heatherly]

Beautifuly post Jolly.

One of the hardest affirmations that I learned to say to myself many years ago was, I love myself. Once I was able to say it I used it over and over again for a while. It worked.

I always think of this as brainwashing or hypnotic suggestions. I feel that I was brainwashed by my mom to not love myself.

 

[JennyS]

It can be a hard lesson.

And I emphasize lesson, as in lesson to be learnt.
Hard just means difficult, but it is a worthwhile lesson that can be learnt.

The problem is that it takes time and sometimes a long time to learn.

I hope you are tenacious enough to try to learn it again and again, as long as it takes.

Why?

Because you are worthy of that love and that respect.