Loving Yourself Through Every Changing Season

There can be no acceptance of yourself until you come to love every part that has brought you to where you are.

As I complete the finishing touches to my upcoming course on cultivating deep healing, self-love, and acceptance, I am reflecting on all the ways I used to compromise my own needs, reject myself, and sacrifice my values in order to seek love and acceptance outside of myself.

When you go through life believing that you won’t be accepted as you are, you learn to suppress and hide, (reject) all of who you are.

And you start depending on the external world to show you who you are.

It takes time to soften, to loosen the tight knot that is creating the sense of disconnection from yourself, from love, from life.

But the moment it happened, the moment I softened and met life exactly as it is—exactly as it has always been—was the moment I met myself in the very same way.

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“We spend our days searching for the answer
when the symphony of truth has been playing inside our hearts
all along.”

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In the ten years I have been healing and studying spirituality, I have come to learn that self-love is self-acceptance.

And self-acceptance is self-love.

For there can be no love of yourself if you are afraid or ashamed of any part of yourself.

And there can be no acceptance of yourself until you come to love every part that has brought you to where you are.

Find out more about my course “Going Within” here.

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Life is an ocean: a continuous movement of expansion and contraction.

When you can fully meet each moment as it appears—shimmering, breaking, beautiful, and fully allow the emotion that each moment evokes—abandonment, rejection, betrayal, grief, failure, vulnerability, fear—without moving, without shrinking, without turning away, then you are meeting life exactly as it is.

Even when it bruises you. Even when it feels as though it’s bursting through your heart, consuming you, swallowing you whole—if you can be with it all, then you can be with yourself in exactly the same way.

This is the invitation.

For none of these energies are here to punish you, even though it may seem that way.

They are here to invite you to welcome everything: to love, accept, and allow everything, including yourself.

the moon: a humble witness to the beauty beneath her

Self-acceptance has a different texture to acceptance.

Nine years ago, I had to accept I had a problem.

I had to accept my life was unmanageable. I had to accept that nothing was going to change until I changed.

And I had to accept that if I ever returned to that space, I would go straight back into a life I knew in my bones I wasn’t designed to live.

But all of these prayers of acceptance were external.

There were still many, many layers to get through before I could reach the one thing I needed to accept above anything else.

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As we develop through our younger years, we often experience an inherent disconnect due to the way we are met by our culture, caregivers and peers.

This can potentially cause a shutting down of our natural, spontaneous way of expressing who we truly are in any given moment. It causes a split in our psyche: part of us longs to be who we are and another part resists being who we are for fear we won’t be accepted.

This is the wound.

When you don’t feel you will be accepted as you are, you unconsciously reject who you are.

You learn to suppress, adapt, contort, control, please, and perfect yourself in ways that are damaging to you.

Understandably, lack of self-love follows.

Because, how can you love an adaptation of who you truly are? How can you love something created as a response to other people’s wounds?

It makes complete sense.

However, paradoxically, it is love that heals. Love, even for the parts created out of fear, guilt, and shame.

For these parts were given a role to fulfill: to help you survive.

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“And if you ever you have one of those days
when you feel like you’re not enough,
just become yourself — more lovingly,
more passionately, and more intensely
than ever before.”

Read more about wounding here:

Softening

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How to start reconnecting with yourself

Meeting yourself with gentleness allows you to fall into inner acceptance.

1. Start by learning to accept and embrace all the different parts of yourself with love and understanding. Even the parts you don’t quite know how to hold space for right now, the parts you might perceive as negative.

2. Recognise that every part of you—the tough inner critic, the compulsive part, the outspoken part, the shrinking part—are all simply trying to protect you from further emotional pain.

3. Gently invite the younger parts of yourself that are frozen in time, and hurting, to step forward and share their story. Create a safe space to allow them to show up and be heard.

4. Ask questions, and track the origins of your dis-empowering beliefs through journaling and meditation. Some common core beliefs are: I am alone. I am not good enough. I am not worthy of love. I am not confident. I am ashamed.

5. Uproot the mistaken belief: see the event clearly through the lens of the adult that you are now, and come up with the correct interpretation of the event.

Prompts

When self-love feels too far for me to embody, I find it moves closer each time I ask myself these questions: 

• What am I believing about myself that isn’t true?

• What do I need to believe about myself instead?

• What part of me am I struggling to hold space for right now?

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Tender Reminder

When you are not afraid or ashamed of any part of yourself, your whole life becomes aligned with love.

For it is fear that grasps and clings.

But it is love that lets go.

Quote

“Accept whatsoever is there, and once you accept unconditionally, then everything is beautiful. One should simply go on enjoying whatsoever comes on the way. Non-asking will give you a state of non-desire. Not complaining will make you more contented. This moment is all. Never go beyond this moment, but whatsoever happens, be true to it. Be authentic to it.”

―Osho

What this piece means (to me)

And if they leave - just grow flowers in all the empty spaces.
For they were simply preparing your earth for sweeter things.
(Bloom for Yourself)

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Sometimes we call in that which is unresolved within us; a reflection of what we desperately need to heal. Nothing is a mistake. It is a lesson: an opportunity to heal our deepest wounds and prepare us for the next season of growth.

Signs, Symbols, Reflections

Sometimes, before going to bed, I pull an inner compass card or an untamed elemental card. Other times, I blindly bookmark a page in my symbols book. I then reflect on them in the morning before writing morning pages, and before picking up my phone.

Last night's card was ‘wisdom’. It serves as a reminder that in addition to the wisdom you already possess, you also have access to universal wisdom.

In the words of the author, Neel van Lierop: “How would a seed ever know how to become a tree, flower, of human being? The wisdom of that transformation is within the seed.”

Monet Lake

A story of manifestation in action:

It was 7:30 on Thursday morning and my friend and I arrived in the darkness; frost on the ground, lights glistening in the trees.

It was going to be a very cold dip.

As we passed the sauna, (the shepherds hut) I couldn't help but express my desire, "How lovely would it be if we had that to ourselves after our dip this morning."

The next day, we arrived at the same time, but it was colder than the previous day: the first ice swim of the year.

We were met by one of the owners who greeted us with: “I’m on sauna duty today but the 7am customer hasn’t shown up. The fire’s ready and roaring. If you want to, the hut is yours until seven fifty-five.”

So we dipped in the M lake, a few feet away from the sauna.

The ice had already started breaking, jangling like music as I slowly stepped in.

I immersed my whole body, looked up at the moon and whispered: "Thank you."

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My course Going Within: a 5 module course for cultivating deep healing, self-love, and acceptance” starts on Monday 4th to Friday 22nd December. For more information, see here. The course is valued at £222 but if you are paid subscriber, (£5 a month, or £50 for the year) you will have free access to it. Learn how to heal deeply, manage your emotions, and use the power of embodied writing, creativity and energy work to create more presence and joy.

There will also be a live zoom class on 22nd December where we will do a meditation and talk about any parts of the course you have questions or reflections on.

Monday 4th December - Module 1, Understanding Emotions
Friday 8th December - Module 2, Compassion & Safety
Monday 11th December - Module 3, Inner Child Healing
Friday 15th December - Module 4, Writing Techniques (embodied, journal, higher self, sketchbook, scripting)
Monday 18th December Module 5, Intention & Ritual
Friday 22nd December - Live Zoom class

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