Write with TLC

Three of the scariest words I've ever said were "I love me." That's not a typo. I still remember the first time I whispered it to myself while staring into the mirror. I stumbled over the words. I wondered if I meant them. I also wondered if saying them to myself was narcissistic.  What a strange moment that was. We often talk about self-love with either a wishy-washy, new age-y attitude or with derision. But, the reality is we can't truly love anyone else until we love ourselves.  Loving yourself might be the farthest thing from narcissism because to love one's self, one must acknowledge and face the things one doesn't much like about one's self.  Loving yourself doesn't mean you think you're perfect or superior or even wise. It  simply means you treat yourself with the same kindness, compassion, understanding, and devotion you treat anyone you love. For me, at that point in my life, that was unthinkable. How could I possibly love my

When I was in college my friends and I often consoled each other when a relationship would end by saying "He (or she if it was a female friend) didn't deserve your love anyway."  As I thought back on this defense mechanism, I started thinking about how often in life we apply this idea that someone doesn't deserve love because of a or b or c . Is this true? Or is love the thing that just might change a or b or c ? I ask myself these questions often and have since I started trying to live from a place of love. If you want to put more love into the world, you can't base your worldview on hatred or on searching for people who "deserve" love. When love is used as a reward and the removal of love is used as a punishment, we create a world lacking consistency and heavy on insecurity. I know I don't always "deserve" love and some of the love that has been most impactful in my life has come when I didn't "deserve" it. It ha

We look for love to fill our lives to bring us to connection. We look for romance to prove love is something grand and larger than life. But so often what we call love is lust. We lust after another person. We lust after what life can offer. We lust after the intimacy that comes from connection. We romanticize the lust that catches each other's attention. We mistake lust for love and love for lust. And sometimes... Sometimes the lust we feel grows into a connection that leads to love. The physical becomes the emotional. But sometimes lust fades away and we look for what's left behind. It can be friendship or love or even disconnection. I look at love through such different eyes than I did when I was younger. I often mistook lust for love and missed the love that presented itself in quiet moments. I wanted to see some grand gesture that would sweep me off my feet yet I never trusted grand gestures. I wanted to believe that every offer of lust was an offer of love. Love and

I had a different post planned for today, but  this morning I read an email from  My Intent  promoting a  14 Day Self-Love Journey  that intrigued me enough to see what they were doing. The day one journal prompt was "What is love to you? What is your intention with this self-love journey?" The more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to blog about the first question... "What is love to you?" "What is love to me?" "What is love?" For much of my life, I subconsciously equated love with possession and jealousy. Love was a weapon. Love was scary. Love was vulnerability. I also thought love was only love if it was reciprocated. Love was an emotion. Love was dreamy and romantic and giving and kind...  Love was something I had to earn.  Love was the reward I'd get for achieving perfection. Love was always... out there, just beyond my reach.  A few years ago I decided to live from a foundation of love. I wanted a more solid fo