As Valentine’s Day is upon us, I wanted to share my current favorite message on love. Sorry, no dumpster fire of online dating updates here! That will have to wait for Book II, wink wink. But just stick with me here for a moment.
According to good old Wikipedia, “love is an emotion involving strong attraction, affection, emotion, emotional attachment or concern for a person, animal, or thing”. You may be thinking well duh Allie. Thanks for sharing Captain Obvious, but I’ll tell you right now I wish I’d read AND really dissected this definition MANY years ago. It could have saved me a lot of heartache and a whole lot of time and money too!
I’ve shared previously that when I married my ex husband I was naive to the fact that there’s a difference between loving someone and being IN love with someone. Two very different things. I’m also a fixer and someone who historically poured love into others in a misguided effort to get that same love and attention back. I thought if I just gave more, did more, supported better, it would eventually be reciprocated. This has cost me dearly over the years but with awareness, has come a much higher level of discernment and with that, much greater self love.
It wasn’t until long after the failed marriage and then family estrangement that eventually led to the dissolution of my family, that I really sat down to analyze my previous relationships, familial and otherwise. It didn’t take long to see a pattern. To identify that a lacking self perception and lower than typical self worth had led to years of me burying my true self, my desires, and my needs in an effort to be whatever it was I thought the other person wanted.
Now before you go saying I knew she was fake, that’s not it at all. I literally poured everything I had into each of these versions of me to be chosen, loved, and appreciated. At the time it was completely unconscious. I wasn’t sitting around plotting my next chameleon camouflage suit to get something from someone. In fact maybe worse yet I was unknowingly trying to be what everyone else needed or wanted so that I could then pour into them and be loved. I’d poured years of time, energy, money, advice, support, care, and “love” into so many people who had either very little or no desire to do the same for me. “Friends”. Boyfriends, Family members. Employees. The list is long.
Yeah, not such a pretty self realization! BUT a life changing one for sure. I’ve said all along people, the work, works. I said it’s often simple, but I sure as hell never said it was easy. This realization came after it all came crashing down. The marriage. The “perfect family” that went right on without me when I finally had the courage to set some boundaries. The job and with it, my right hand man, one of my closest “friends”, when a toxic boss finally pushed me out. All the things I’d worked so hard to build, just poof. All that was left was me, and a son who desperately needed the best version of his mother to figure her shit out and show up.
So this Valentine’s Day I’m talking about self love. Whether you’re married, single, dating, divorced, or have even flat out walked away from the idea of companionship. I’m talking about building a relationship of love with your own damn self! Who are YOU and what do YOU enjoy doing? What brings YOU joy? Not you as a mom or you as a partner or you as a boss or a daughter or an employee etc. But YOU! As your own sovereign being with a whole heart and mind and spirit of your own. I encourage you to work on finding THAT love again and if you’re blessed enough to have not lost it, then fan it! Build it! Grow it!
And with that I say, Happy Valentine’s Day to YOU!!!
