Love Yourself Like That

I was always told, "If you don't fix your face, a bird's gonna come shit on your lip!" That was my mom's side of the family, being funny, but not just "haha" funny. They would be on your ass when you got in trouble, and then start feeling bad and want to lighten the tension by using sarcasm. They'd say some shit like that and I couldn't help but smile. That's a kind of love. It teaches compassion, because you didn't have to be serious about life all the time, but you do need to know when to stop playing around and get your shit together.

Growing up, I had a few cousins I'd see regularly. No matter how far we lived from each other, our parents made it a point to get together at least once every couple months. The feeling of a strong family bond meant everything. Love from family is like nothing else. It forms and molds individualized views on love and how to love yourself, while also seeing how others view and receive love and how they feel about themselves.

If you observed enough then, or when you get older, the family bonding times become less and less, and then eventually not at all. You'll be able to see the generational shit that eventually will fall on to you and your perspective of the world. For me, it didn't become evident until after I had children. When I started parenting how I was parented.

Some people are lucky and get the traditional standard happily-ever-after, but let's face it, that's not happening for just anyone and it's not for everyone, now, either. Times keep changing.

What doesn't changed, though, is that there are different kinds of love. No, I'm not talking about love languages. I want to share an inner journey I recently stumbled upon. I'm talking about different "themes" for love. But ultimately finding out, *SPOILER ALERT* it's really YOU you want. In all of these themes, you're the common denominator and you're the one making these connections feel how they do to you.

If you're a hopeless romantic like me, you know exactly what I mean when I call it "theme love". It still involves falling in love, but with a person that the universes sees compatible with your season of life. Maybe you make bad choices. That happens and it's okay, too! Situations keep presenting themselves in different forms until the lesson is learned. Lessons make for greater blessings when you learn and endure the season.

I'm Felicity, the stereotypical 29 year old midwestern, single mother of 2. Both of my kids have different dads and each of those relationships have their own theme of love. I have a shit load of childhood trauma I didn't realize affected my behaviors and way of thinking. I wasn't guided how to process, only how to cope.

I found a lot of comfort in men, relationships, and survival. My father unintentionally set my expectations in how I should allow men to treat me. And my mother unintentionally molded the format in how I should view myself. Both, I still have issues with that I'm processing and letting go.

My hopes in sharing these disastrously beautiful self discovery stories are to shed a different light on the "trendy" topic of self love and how every relationship in my life has lead me to a deeper level of understanding of what I actually keep searching for in myself while teaching me what still I need to learn.

Theme love is a kind of love. And you should love yourself like that, like how you want other people to love you.

They call me Fel.

(Chapter 1 pending)