Loving Yourself When Everything Falls Apart, Including You

My journey of self-love is incomplete. In fact, I’m standing right in the middle of the battle as I’ve briefly laid down my arms to write this post.

I tend to only share about my really dark season after I’ve come out the other side. I prefer stories with a happy ending, tied up in a pretty bow. Stories with a nice, organized conclusion that gives you hope and also maybejustalittlebit reminds you that, perhaps I was a bit of a mess before, but don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out now! Look how great things are!

This is not one of those stories. This is a story of me, in the thick of it, without the answers and without any pretty ribbon to tie it all up in. I guess it’s more of a confession than a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

But I’ve already learned this, dammit.

Ugh. What is so especially hard about writing those words is I thought I had mastered this. I regained self-worth by climbing a mountain for two weeks after the end of an abusive marriage and a traumatic divorce; I rebuilt my self-love after being hit by a truck and spending a week in a Bali hospital questioning whether I was strong enough to continue.

I built a social media brand devoted to instilling others with the self-confidence and self-belief that they were stronger than they imagined, and could accomplish greater things than they’d ever dreamt.

I overcame so much to get to a place of self-worth and self-love in my mid-20s, and now, here I am again, approaching 30, struggling to be able to look in the mirror and not scream profanities at the person staring back.

I thought I’d figured this out already, dammit.

But if there’s anything I hope to accomplish with writing this, it’s to remind you (and me) that self-love is not a door to pass through, not an obstacle to overcome, not a box to “check” off — but rather a journey or a cycle, containing a whole bunch of different trials that show up in brand new scenarios for as long as the earth continues to spin.

And I also hope to remind you that if you’re still in the middle of a self-love struggle, I am right there with you. I don’t have it all figured out and I don’t have the answers, and I unfortunately don’t have any shiny ribbon in which to wrap up our stories… yet.

But in my moments of clarity, I do believe, with every fiber of my being, that we’re going to figure this out. We’re going to get through this and be okay, and be built up stronger than before, ready to take on the next battles that will surely come.

Hmph. Where to begin

So, allow me to let you into my ongoing, unfinished, unsterilized process of facing the reality that I do not love myself.

Social media has an insidious way of tearing apart self-love and self-confidence the second one shows any weakness. I know this; I’ve built my business on social media and I’ve seen the dark side.

But the way social media has picked apart my self-love might not be how you’d expect.

Although I’ve always tried to keep things real and authentic, talking about the hard and messy stuff and showing you the not-so-picture-perfect moments of travel and life, I neglected a much quieter disease, festering beneath the surface.

Truthfully, I did overcome so many battles and learn so much about self-love in my early and mid-20s, but I realize now that it was imperfect, or incomplete.

You see, growing up I had built my self-worth on living a life that was outwardly “impressive” to others — one that would elicit admiration or, if I’m being perfectly honest, jealousy.

Although deep down I hated and resented my “promising” career, I felt trapped in a toxic marriage, and I was wholly out of place in the church and legal communities in which I tried to belong, at least on the outside my life looked freaking great. The fact that others believed my life was idyllic carried me through, even when I knew it was a farce . . . until it couldn’t carry me anymore.

My divorce was devastating and traumatic, and I lost my community, my church, my friends, my reputation, and my sense of self & belonging in a gloriously dramatic fashion. I stood on the bow of my sinking ship, setting fire to the sails with a middle finger to the world, going down with it in a fury.

I call those the Dark Ages. I can laugh about them now because I figured it out. Whoops. But I digress.

I then managed to graduate law school (with honors, by the sheer grace of God) and fled the country for an around-the-world trip during which I spent two weeks trekking through the Nepal Himalayas on a route called the Annapurna Circuit completely alone. During monsoon season. There were leeches. And landslides. And days I’d go without speaking aloud to another human being.

It changed my life, so much that I got the coordinates of the summit tattooed on my right arm. Because I never wanted to forget how strong I was even when I felt weak, unprepared, and alone. Because I never wanted to forget that the only way I accomplished the toughest moments on that trek was to push through the tears and pain, and take one more step — one after the other after the other, until I’d taken 20 kilometers of steps and could rest my head for the night again, and then wake up and do it all over again.

That journey laid the foundation for me to admit, a year later, that I outright hated being a lawyer. Despite having just completed three brutal years of graduate school to get my law degree, and working myself into a pile of student debt, I couldn’t continue pretending that the paycheck and the esteem were enough for me.

So I decided to put my degree in storage, sell everything I owned, and move to Bali to try to figure something else out. Maybe I could get my blog off the ground, or develop photography skills and make a living off of Instagram. Maybe I just needed a few months to rest and recover and then I’d come back to Washington DC and get a “real job.”

Shortly after landing in Bali, after a couple of months chasing my tail with zero sense of vision or goals or order in my life, I got T-boned by a truck while driving my bike and landed myself in the hospital for a week. Ouch.

In those moments of weakness, one of my closest friends at the time suggested I go home to America, because it just didn’t seem like I was “tough enough” to handle Bali. Double ouch.

For some reason I stayed — maybe it was perseverance, or maybe stubbornness — and went through a process of ridding myself of the self-victimization and fears that held me back from making any progress in this “dream life” I’d set out to pursue. I removed toxic people from my life, got a gym membership, started reading and listening to self-help and personal development books and podcasts, and finally found purpose to keep me grounded and on track.

What was that purpose? To help people see their potential, discover their own strength to get there, and implement the changes and tools to make it all reality.

That was about two and a half years ago, and here I am still in Bali, with a business built off of Instagram and my blog, inspiring people to believe in themselves and run after their dreams.

My Instagram account skyrocketed, dream jobs came my way, and I became known for my positive mindset, encouraging tales of overcoming, and messages of self-love and self-belief. It was incredible! I figured it all out!!

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