Self-Love

My wellness goal in 2021 is self-love. I chose self-love because I have finally realized that I cannot do anything to better myself without it. Without self-love, weight lost is weight gained back. Self-esteem nurtured is self-esteem shattered. Healthy boundaries established are healthy boundaries crossed. And the pattern of self-sabotage and self-loathing continues.

Self-love is harder to achieve than one might think. There is no recipe, no shortcuts, no universal 12-step plan. The path to self-love is highly personal and can only be paved by the person seeking it. The terrain within is specific to every person’s individual experiences and can only be navigated by that person.

Self-love is difficult for me because my father sexually abused me, and my mother was verbally abusive and negligent, most likely from untreated mental illness. The abuse by my father started around the age of 3 or 4 and has been a source of profound shame for me—even though I know it was not my fault, that knowledge fails to penetrate my heart.

I’ve read that I need to find the child that I was, somewhere inside of me, so that I can tell her all the things she wasn’t told by her parents. So today I search for her, with varying degrees of success.

In my mind’s eye I see her, four years old, crawling inside a sleeping bag in a closet, hiding, crying, arms hugging knees, and wondering why everything hurt so much when she just wanted to be loved. She was trying so hard to make herself likeable and lovable and yet she felt neither. All she felt was ashamed and lonely and scared.

I see her at seven, injured but numb, unable to acknowledge the pain of being hurt and unable to tell anyone why she was hurt, including her inquiring mom. I have a three-inch scar on my buttocks today from an incident she repressed before it was even over. I suppose that when the abuse starts early, trauma responses become increasingly swift.

I see her again at ten, back pressed up against the hallway wall, frozen, listening to her father call her into the bathroom, not wanting to go in but knowing she would have to go in anyway. He had waited until her stepmom and stepsister had left the house before calling for her. Afterwards, she walked out of the house, found a payphone and called her stepdad's parents collect, asking them to pick her up at a grocery store. All the nice things her father said and did came at a price she didn’t want to pay anymore.

One would think that by saving myself at ten, I would love myself more. But that single act of bravery was followed by years of chaos with my volatile and erratic mother. We moved around a lot, living mostly in a van with our pets and my stepdad. At 14, she told me that she loved me but didn’t like me, which was funny because I didn’t feel any more loved than I was liked.

I graduated high school at 16 and left home at 17. It would take another 20 years of abusive relationships to identify the most deeply engrained lesson of my childhood: love was suffering. Love, I had learned, always comes with conditions, always came at a physical, sexual, and emotional cost. It’s hard to have a healthy relationship with anyone, much less yourself, when love has never been a source of joy, comfort, or stability.

I don’t think I would have attempted self-love (this year or any other) if it wasn’t for my children. Having children opened my heart to unconditional love—giving and receiving—and it is spectacular and beautiful.

I believe the child I was is desperate to feel the kind of love I feel for my children today. In telling her story to you, I’m hoping she’ll see that I’m trying.