Self-Love for the Self-Abandoned
Tired of hearing people telling you to focus on self-love? Yeah me too. When you grow up with emotional neglect, getting your head around the concept of self-love is extremely difficult. Many of us know self-destruction, self-denial, self-abandonment. We live in the darkness with everything that is familiar and easy. Pain, sadness, alone. Then someone comes bounding in claiming to see instantly that you lack self-love and that’s all you need to focus on, anyone else want to scream?
Being told you are a “waste of space” by your father when you are age 5 stays with you. It echos many years later when you finally decide to learn to drive, and the instructor raises their voice a little too much. Sometimes it takes a momentary familiar sound to reignite. Trauma is hard to lose. Learned abandonment is hard to lose. Once people leaving you becomes a regular thing, you start to wonder what on earth you could possibly have that anyone would want to stay for. And from this seed grows the self-abandonment.
I discovered the power of being witnessed earlier in 2020 when I attended a business challenge on Facebook. The facilitator began by asking us our dreams and aspirations. All nice and fluffy. Then day two, she drilled down and asked us to share our traumas. I watched 600 women pouring out decades of pain into a tiny chat box. And it kept coming. We witnessed each other. We understood each other. The facilitator gave such care, empathy and encouraged us to keep going, until every one of us was done. We breathed, the space entering our bodies where the trauma had been held. I’m not saying that was all it took to transcend years of trauma. But a massive release occurred for many people that day.
It was enough for me to realise that we need to do this on smaller scales. Offering to witness each other as we process our emotions on the things that haunt us. Simply being a presence can be so healing. Releasing trauma gives space for the good things to come in.
As for the self-love, I came upon a realisation. The last two days I’ve conducted a few aspects of life from my yoga mat. Using it as a place to sit as I work through things, some grief, as well as learning the asanas. It feels like a safe space, welcoming me to pour out whatever is inside me. Each time I settle here, something new comes to me. And I finally understand things that had lost me previously.
Inspiration gifted me this sentence starter; “Today means…” As I heard it, I wondered how I could finish that sentence. I began to write;
Today means…
• Not punishing myself for other people’s choices
• Not making myself feel bad
• Not blaming myself anymore
• Not regretting the past.
I remembered a friend and I were discussing Facebook friends some months ago, and she told me; “I don’t allow anyone around me to make me feel bad”. I had been telling her I was holding myself back from sharing my writing through Facebook because I had followers who had previously bullied me over an article I had written. The article? I was going through a tough time and was desperate for a holiday. I decided to use my leave from work to volunteer to help refugees instead of sunning myself somewhere. It was an incredible experience and the pain I was going through was minuscule in comparison to that of these resilient, creative people. I wrote about it and it reached two publications. These women labelled me as thinking I was better than others. Nope, I just process a lot of things by writing. If I can help others through that processing, then mega yay!
The penny dropped. Self-love perhaps is about just that. Ensuring that we don’t feel bad for things that aren’t ours to own. Which means self-love is also about feeling good. So I started another list;
Today means…
• More yoga
• Drinking plenty of water and herbal tea
• Feeling warm, clean and comfortable.
And maybe at this stage it can be as simple as that. Making a decision about what this day can be. A small step into this confusing world of self-love. Can we try it my fellow abandoned?
Today means…