Keep Some Love For Yourself

I am once again compelled to write about a subject that I believe is one of the most important in living a healthy and happy life.  That subject of course is love and in specific self-love.  I would like to take a little bit of a different approach this time and that is the notion that we should be intentional in keeping a little more love for ourselves, not giving it away as it we ourselves don't need any of it.  I don't even know where we got that notion of giving it all to others and thinking that we will be OK or that somehow we will get it back.  

The main problem with giving all our love and thinking we are going to get it back is that there are so many people who take it and don't give it back or who are incapable of giving it back.  The expectation that we will get some of our love back is simply not as realistic as keeping some of it for ourselves and loving ourselves just a little more than we love anyone else.  I am not sure that this includes our children but I am tempted to say that even if it is our children we cannot keep breathing in the joy of living if we are breathing love only into them.  Eventually let's be honest about it, we will become resentful.  

Now that I have that off my chest I will be intentional and say that one of the reasons for this particular blog is a reaction to what has been going on in my life.  I like many of you was raised to believe that love is something we give and not something we keep.  Yet what has happened for me more recently is this reinforcement around keeping some love and loving myself a little more than I love my husband or my friends.  I have been fighting for the right to love myself all my life and at many intervals of my life I have realised that I have given up all my love to others and then wondered why the heck I felt so empty and unloved.  I think it boiled down to the fact that I was not saving some of that love for myself.  I was giving it all away and many times giving it to people who did not deserve it or were able to receive it.  

We are not victims of a lack of love nor am I a victim for not keeping some love for me.  We are just in a state of unknowing and a state of ignorance about how essential self love is.  No matter how many times we hear it we just don't believe it and we don't adhere to the premise that if we don't love ourselves how in the hell can we love anyone else.  

We have proved it to ourselves time and time again but we just won't get it until we have fallen to the floor of emotional darkness and we feel like we cannot get up and there is no one there to pick us up. The  ugly truth is that no one wants to deal with a person who let themselves fall to the floor and who addresses life like a victim.  And so it is up to us to keep some love and to love ourselves just a little more than we love anyone else.  

Talk to yourself every day and ask yourself what you will do to replenish your love so that you have some to give.  Make yourself first in line and then everyone and everything else second.  Do the housework after you have taken a bubble bath.  Cook for your husband after you have danced in the living room for an hour.  Read a book before you buy one for a friend.  Take a bike ride before you lend your bike to someone who wants to use it.  Make yourself a  priority and this will translate into you having the energy and genuine desire to give some love to someone else.  

I act like I know it all don't I?  Well I don't and I want to be the first to admit it.  I love Iyanla because she will say to her clients: "tell the  truth boo".  I want to tell you all the  truth so that I can tell myself the truth so that the truth will prevail and I will be more healed today than yesterday when it felt like I needed to hide under my covers.  We all have those days don't we?  The truth is that yesterday I did not love myself enough, I didn't make Eliott first and I acted out of anger around the deal that I thought I was dealt.  I was feeling like a victim and all day long I reached out to people who barely reached back.  The reason they did not reach back is mainly because I was expecting validation that they were unwilling to give or maybe they were just exhausted or tired.  Maybe they had their own battle to fight and my love just did not change that.  Today I uncovered the truth and that is that I was trying to love everyone else more than myself because I didn't see the love in me.  I was in the darkness of my own dirty secrets and I did not keep some of that love for myself like I should have.  

As Iyanla might say and I will add to it: " tell the truth about loving yourself and about loving others"