Are you loving yourself right now?

     Standing on a dock someone very close to me asked me this.  " Are you loving yourself right now?"  I said yes, looking back I don't know if I was or not.  In fact, I don't know if I had every really pondered the concept of self love long enough to really know what role it played in my life.  Lately though, I've been looking closer at it.  I've noticed a couple things, for starters, I have been pretty mean to myself. I mean, the stuff that I say to myself is more mean than anything I would ever say to anyone else.  I've also noticed that in other ways I have felt shame or guilt for putting my needs ahead of others.  After a bit of a health scare,  I have committed myself to making healthy decisions.  If that means that I can't be there for someone else then I have to be ok with that because that is a part of self love.  They need to be ok with it as well and if they aren't, then their not someone that is whole heartedly beneficial having in my life.  Other times, I have felt unworthy for the gifts that I have had in my life.  I've also felt guilt for having the things in my life.  All a part of shame.  A very tricky thing that can get in the way of self love.

     The first image is kind of disturbing (its from the film Carrie,) I preferred focusing on the contents of the article and the "test" at the end.    Says some pretty important stuff.  I think we could all grow by looking at how shame affects our lives and value self love more.  I hope you love yourself as much as I do, in fact, I hope you love yourself more than I do.  May we all full heartedly love every ounce of ourselves, whether its the parts that make us "crazy" the parts that make us "slutty" or the parts of us that are "broken" .  By the way I don't think your crazy, slutty or broken.  These are words that other people often use to describe things that make them uncomfortable. xoxo

Detoxing Shame: A 5 Fold Path by Anjana Love Dixon
http://theanjananetwork.net/2014/07/06/detoxing-shame-a-5-fold-path/

P.S Here is Ani DiFranco singing Shameless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjizt4Ixt6E