Journey to Self-love
Coming home to my heart and soul: My 18-Year Journey Back to Self-Love
An experience I wish to teach everyone, including my children. We are taught many values and morals from a young age: respect, discipline, obedience, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, seeking external validation through academic success, and the pursuit of perfectionism, just to name a few. Except, the most important one - self-love.
How is self-love not instilled in our core belief? It was my lack of self-love that turned me into a people pleaser. Growing up, whenever we had guests at home, I felt obligated to drop everything that mattered to me and prioritize the needs of people I didn’t know or care about.
No matter what I was doing, if someone needed something, I was conditioned to put myself last and cater to their requests first. That pattern of always putting “others first” made me forget that I deserved the same care and love that I so easily gave to everyone else.
Growing up, I watched my mother always eat last because she was so busy serving everyone else. By the time she sat down to eat, everyone was finished, and she would sit there alone. As a kid, I thought that was normal. But as an adult, it started to bother me deeply as it happened to me. I began calling out the disrespectful behavior and made my voice heard.
We’ve been so poorly conditioned by these harmful patterns that they start to seem normal. We hide behind excuses like, “That’s how it was done when I was growing up.” But really, how can we be so blind to not evolve and change something that’s clearly wrong? Tradition is no excuse for perpetuating harmful and unexcused behavior.
In my past relationship, I allowed myself to give so much that I forgot what it felt like to get anything back from anyone. I had to fight to be heard and seen, I had to call out the inequality, injustice and the hypocritical behavior. I was abused verbally, mentally, psychologically and emotionally for standing up for myself, for standing up to right and wrong.
Their conditioning and childhood was so poor, they thought passing on the same patterns would bring their ego a boost. Until they realized the person on the other end wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Had I witnessed self-love, self-care, and self-validation growing up, I would’ve followed that path and stood up for myself long before enduring an agonizing 18-year journey back to who I am. But I know it’s never too late. Here I am now, making my voice and experiences heard, and finally respecting the long-neglected echoes in my mind.
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