When was the last time you told your child they were beautiful, funny, supported, loved? 

In years past, I didn’t put much outward importance on Valentine’s Day, despite deep down wanting to be that lucky person who was surprised with a massive bouquet and an over the top show of unconditional love. I wanted the world to see that I was worthy of being loved (which, indeed, I was and am) because I didn’t feel it myself. 

Over the years, through the dark days of caring for my husband through chronic depression while nursing a newborn and bringing up a 7 year old, and then my daughter’s mental illness, I came to the realisation that love is at its truest, most pure and potent self when it is silent and invisible to others. 

Love is a purposeful act in an every day moment.

• Love is sitting up all night watching your loved one, to make sure they see another day
• Love is holding back someone’s hair as they throw up with food poisoning. 
• Love is de-icing the car, unloading the dishwasher, making a cup of tea. 
• Love is repairing without blame after an argument.
• Love is seeing what is needed and giving it.
• Love is the knowing and the showing that you’re there forever and for whatever. 

But in all that loving for others, I lost sight of loving myself. And that’s easily done when we are caring, giving people. I was waiting for someone to give me permission to love myself.

Prioritising me didn’t feel like a worthwhile pursuit and loving myself when all I saw was what I wasn’t felt like a waste of energy, like pushing water uphill instead of the flood of love I so easily and readily gave out to my family and the world. But every day that I didn’t love myself was a day when my capacity to feel, empathise, and love was compromised. And when it impacted on my mental health and I burned out, something had to change.

When you come to self love, it tends not to be about accepting all of you at first, it is about accepting some of you. It’s about recognising your right as a human to have needs - emotional, physical, spiritual - and to meet them. It’s about seeing all of the good within you, the unique skills and talents and perspectives and love within you, while understanding that we’re all perfectly imperfect and that’s ok. It’s about recognising your right to positive wellbeing, connection and happiness, your right to say yes and no, your right to be exactly who you are in full technicolour and glitter. 

But I fear that self love, like Valentine’s Day, has been co-opted.

It’s become another stick to beat ourselves with. If we don’t love ourselves, then we’re less than and not good enough. Failing at self love? Unworthy of self love because we can’t love ourselves?! Really? No wonder so many of us feel not good enough. 

And there are already so many blockers to loving ourselves: our past, our parents, our world view, our current capacity, other people’s opinions, comparisonitis, shame, fear, judgement. 

Self love can be so intertwined with how we see our bodies too, but it really isn’t about size. It’s about acceptance of all you are, who you are at your heart: every moment of your life from that small child who played with wild abandon to the grown up you today who is getting up every day and battling on. 

If you have been through traumatic events in your childhood, you may dissociate from the present moment. Being in our body - the act of being present in ourselves - can be deeply unsettling and feel really emotionally unsafe. So we escape into food, alcohol, exercise, shopping….anything to release us from the act of being here, present, in this body. And that perpetuates the wrongness that stops us from accepting ourselves. We can use perfectionism, overworking, and too high expectations as a way to keep ourselves in a place of shame, where we are bad and not good enough. The inner critic tells us that we’ve failed, we’re rubbish, we’re useless. Why would we deserve to love ourselves then? 

Well, dear reader, you absolutely deserve to love yourself as you are, whatever you've done, not done, believed, discounted, overlooked, felt, eaten, bought, said, thought, or hoped for.

But we all need some help to get us there, and we won’t find it in the Valentines aisle at the supermarket!

So, let’s take a look at some thoughts on how we can begin to love ourselves…

• Making peace with our bodies - a large part of self love - isn’t about how we look, it’s about how we feel. Be curious about what truths or stories you’re telling yourself and what thoughts come up. You may not have actually recognised them, or you may be familiar with their narrative. Listening to what we are saying to ourselves that reinforces a lack of love is the beginning of understanding the capacity of our window of tolerance to distress and emotional dysregulation and building it. I often ask myself “is this true? Is this helpful? Can I control it?” And generally, it isn’t and I can control it by taking actions to soothe myself.
   
• Discovering ways that suit you to soothe yourself empowers you to challenge the shame, so if you feel big feelings or small rumblings of emotion about yourself rising within, you can use something that can help you back to feeling calm. And what grounds and soothes me is probably different to what soothes and grounds you. That’s ok and exactly as it should be. Own what works for you. You can find a PDF of grounding techniques by clicking the image below.

• Avoid negative self-talk - do you talk to yourself like you would your child or your best friend? I bet you don’t! So try it, just for a day. I expect you’ll see the difference when you’re kind and patient and loving. Can you imagine talking to anyone else like you speak to yourself? No! It wouldn’t be acceptable. So, why is it ok for you to talk to yourself like that? You don’t deserve it.
   
  
• Say something positive to yourself every day. Get a post it note and write a nurturing and supportive message on it. Stick it on the fridge or in your purse or set one as your phone lock screen. I am strong. I am beautiful. I am enough as I am. I am safe. Or tell yourself you’re beautiful or handsome when you look in the mirror. Humour me, and give it a try. Be open to the shifts it creates in you. 
  
  
• Focus on appreciating and respecting what your body can do without judgement - open your palm. Close your fingers. Open them. Close them. Wow! You can pick anything up, you can throw a ball, you can give a hug. Now walk, run, skip, dance if you can…your body moves beautifully and it is AMAZING! You’ll kickstart those feel good hormones too, so it’s a win/win! 
  
  
• Write a list of all the things you’ve achieved, from your 5m swimming badge to that disco dancing championship at Butlins in 1981 ( just me there?!) Focus on your positive qualities, skills, and talents - you’re amazing! It might be hard at first, but once you’ve written all the wins that the world sees, move onto those that can be proud of. What you overcame, what you’ve been through, who you are. I hope you’ve got enough paper! And if this is hard, ask a friend to help. We’ve been brought up to be humble and that humility can be a blocker to appreciation of all we are, have done and continue to do. 
  
  
• Avoid comparisonitis - there is only one of you, and you are not only unique but you are so, so special. Recognise that. Forget everyone else. Forget what the media wants you to believe is ‘normal’ and ‘best’. Forget the standards that don’t sit well with you. Be unapologetically you. The world - and your family - needs you to be 100% authentic. 
  
  
• Treat yourself like you treat others. Care about your worries, don’t diminish them. Celebrate your brilliance, don’t gloss over it. Cheer yourself on and treat yourself well and this will, in time, prove to you that you deserve love and care. Loving yourself is exactly how it should be. You are wonderful and you are worthy. 
  
  
• If this feels like too much to cope with alone, please find a professional to support you. I have a brilliant therapist who has been integral in my journey of healing and loving myself. It’s an act of strength to get help, and yes, you do deserve it. 

And if this all feels too hard, and starting to do this for yourself feels indulgent, please consider doing it for your child. I mentioned that your ability to love yourself is so important to your child as it impacts on them. Your child is watching what you do and how you care for yourself so they can see how to do that for themselves. You are laying down a blueprint for how they will value themselves, how they will care for themselves, and how they will accept themselves. So when you deny yourself the right to healthy food or to go for a walk or berate yourself for natural choices that you perceive as failings, they are watching, they are listening, they are learning. And equally, when you are compassionate to yourself, when you are kind and patient and curious and loving, they see that too. 

If you can’t countenance starting to love and accept yourself for you just yet, maybe start small today- speak kindly to yourself, do something for you, congratulate yourself for something - and do it for them. Because by showing them you are worthy, you’ll be affirming to them that they are too. 

As the Indian poet Kabir put it so beautifully: “The river that flows in you also flows in me.” 

Let’s start to accept all we are, not all we perceive we’re not. 

Own the swing of your hips, the boom of your laugh, the depth of your love. 

Embrace the whole magnificent lot of you. 

Love yourself just a little more today. Self love is the greatest love affair you’ll ever experience. You deserve it.