30 days of self-love: the lesson of 30 days

If it hasn’t yet become clear, I’ll share the biggest takeaway of what I’ve learned through this 30-day project: self-love practices are love practices.

Through learning to love myself more, I’ve learned to love the world more, and the people in it. My partnership is sweeter, kinder. My friendships are too. I laugh a little easier. My communication is a little more patient, a little more honest. I bounce back faster, and I move through feelings faster. I am more correctable than I’ve ever been. Is it still hard for me to hear feedback sometimes? Do I still struggle to communicate when I’m activated? Do I still sometimes talk more than I listen? Yes. Yes. Yes AND, I accept that about myself. I am working on it. I am working really hard to be compassionate with my progress.

Our trying is beautiful, no matter where we are in “the work.”

And we are all in the work, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Life is working us all the time. Are we shaping that change with intentionality, by actually being here for it, or are we drifting? Are we hiding?

Acceptance is not resignation. Acceptance has been the first loving step toward myself and toward my life.

I meant to write this project in 30 days. 30 blog posts, 30 days. Instead, it has turned into 30 blog posts, nearly 7 months.

So then, another takeaway: learning to love myself isn’t linear. Part of why this project has taken so long is because there were many times I had written a post, then felt I wasn’t loving myself well enough to publish it. I wasn’t good enough at love. I had to wait until I was doing it “right” to write about it.

Setbacks is what has happened while I’ve been learning how to love myself. I made space for other things, I gave myself a break, I avoided hard things and then forgave myself for it, I got stuck and lost, I convinced myself I didn’t have anything else to say. I gave myself time to integrate, to practice love, to discover real truths about what it means to love myself enough to do it differently and then, not magically, I began to write again.

Suddenly, there was more to say.

Writing this project has been a teacher. I’ve learned that I procrastinate, that I don’t want to write about self-love when I feel like I don’t deserve it, and that’s when I most need to.

I learned something else that’s magical: as my window of tolerance has grown, and I understand deeper that moment to moment, storms and joys pass, I have become more loving because I have the capacity to be. An increased cognitive flexibility has allowed me to stretch beyond my edges more often in experiences of stress.

Can I reach out to my partner past defense mechanisms when what I really want is a hug? Can I reach within myself when the story surfaces that I’m not smart enough, not good enough, not interesting enough, for a loving squeeze of truth that I’m wonderful as I am, no matter how much growing I have to do? Not always, and not always immediately, and yes, I can, if I keep practicing a resilient gentleness with myself.

I don’t really feel lonely anymore. When I spend time on my own, I enjoy myself and I enjoy the world more, because more often I can remember I’m not the center of it. I get to belong everywhere I go.

I’m of the mycellium, of the water, of conscious community, of my people, of a crowded coffeeshop. A courageous self-love pulls back the veiled truth that isolation hides: interdependence. We are infinitely bound with everything. I am the dirt in the cracks of my Converse and I am the stars and how I treat myself is a ripple across humanity that I will never understand the boundlessness of. I don’t have to be afraid there’s no space for me, that I have to prove myself, that I have to always say yes so people will accept me. We are worthy, just as we are. I am worthy just as I am.

I could write forever about love, because I believe it is the foundation of everything, including our survival as humans on this earth. I hope sharing my experience has been useful to you, because sharing it has changed who I am. I’ve discovered how much joy I get from writing, and writing with the intention to share what I’ve learned and have yet to. It’s one of the many ways I get to become present to this particular feeling of connection that is always waiting in the present moment. The feeling that I’m touching something that is both deep within me and beyond me.

This is both a wrap, and this is only the beginning, forever. I am finally free to make mistakes, as I continue to learn to love. I will always be able to “simply begin again.”

I want to end this project with a sort of prayer, for you, me, all of us.

A Zen master, quoted in Joseph Goldstein’s talk “The Cultivation of Metta,” said “I would like to pass on one little bit of advice I give to everyone. Relax. Just relax. Be nice to each other. As you go through life, simply be kind to people. Try to help them rather than hurt them. Try to get along with them, rather than fall out with them. With that I will leave you, and all my good wishes.”