Self-love is one of those phrases we hear everywhere.
Buy yourself flowers. Take a bath. Book the trip. Say your affirmations. Practice self-care.
And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things, I’ve learned that true self-love goes so much deeper.
For me, understanding what it meant to actually love myself didn’t happen until 2023, about six months after leaving my marriage. I had spent so much of my life focused on other people that turning my attention toward myself felt deeply uncomfortable.
I didn’t know how to give myself the love, compassion, validation, and acceptance I so easily gave to everyone else.
Learning how became one of the most important parts of my healing journey.
And now, years later, I’m discovering even more layers of what true self-love actually means.
Self-Love Can Mean Letting Yourself Be Seen
Recently, I challenged myself to show up online every day throughout August.
I’d wanted to become more consistent for months, but every time I thought about doing it, something stopped me. I knew there was fear underneath it, but through my work with a somatic experiencing practitioner, I began understanding that fear differently.
During one session, I connected with a younger protective part of myself that believed hiding was necessary to be loved and accepted.
That part had learned very early that there were pieces of myself I needed to hide.
Instead of trying to get rid of her, I thanked her.
She had been protecting me.
But I also let her know that we didn’t need to hide anymore. We were safe to be seen.
That experience completely changed how I approached my August challenge.
Showing up online stopped being about followers, opportunities, or growing my business. It became an act of self-love because I was listening to my intuition and showing myself that I could trust what I felt called to do.
Changing Your Inner Voice Is a Self-Love Practice
One of the first things I work on with many of my clients is their inner voice.
Most people don’t realize how critically they speak to themselves because the voice has been there for so long that it simply sounds normal.
I didn’t realize it either.
One practice that helped me begin changing that relationship was mirror work.
It’s simple, but it can be incredibly uncomfortable.
Look at yourself in the mirror and say your name followed by:
“I love you.”
Repeat it three times.
Then:
“You are enough.”
You can add whatever else you need to hear.
“You don’t have to prove yourself.”
“You don’t have to achieve to be loved.”
“You’re safe.”
When I first started doing this, I felt ridiculous. But I kept practicing.
Eventually, speaking lovingly to myself became less foreign.
That’s what practice does.
Self-Love Is Learning to Validate Yourself
Another practice that became especially important during some of my hardest seasons was putting my hand on my heart and speaking to myself the way I would speak to someone I deeply loved.
Instead of immediately trying to fix my pain, I learned to acknowledge it.
I could tell myself:
“I see you.”
“I see how difficult this is.”
“It makes sense that you feel this way.”
“I’m right here.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
This helped me develop something I had previously looked for outside of myself: internal validation.
Support from other people matters. We aren’t meant to do everything alone.
But there is also something incredibly powerful about learning that you can stay with yourself through difficult emotions instead of immediately needing someone else to make them go away.
True Self-Love Also Has a Harder Side
Flowers can be self-love.
Mirror work can be self-love.
Putting your hand on your heart can be self-love.
But there is another side of self-love that isn’t always as comfortable.
Sometimes self-love means saying no when someone wants you to say yes.
It means being authentic instead of agreeable.
It means disappointing someone rather than abandoning yourself to keep them happy.
It means trusting your intuition even when following it feels inconvenient or scary.
It means having your own back when no one else is watching.
Especially for women and mothers, choosing ourselves can bring up enormous guilt because many of us were taught that love means self-sacrifice.
But constantly giving until there is nothing left isn’t love.
It’s self-abandonment.
What Does Self-Abandonment Look Like?
Self-abandonment doesn’t always look dramatic.
Often, it happens in tiny moments throughout our day.
You say yes when your entire body is saying no.
You stay quiet because you don’t want to create conflict.
You overwork because slowing down might bring uncomfortable emotions to the surface.
You reach for your phone, food, relationships, work, or another distraction because you don’t want to feel what is underneath.
You perform for approval.
You ignore your intuition because following it might disappoint someone.
In each of those moments, you leave yourself to avoid something that feels too uncomfortable.
These patterns aren’t evidence that something is wrong with you.
They developed for a reason.
At some point, they may have protected you.
The work isn’t to shame yourself for having them. It’s to become conscious enough to notice when they’re happening.
Self-Love Is Returning, Not Being Perfect
This distinction is so important.
Loving yourself does not mean you will never abandon yourself again.
You will.
You’ll say yes when you wanted to say no. You’ll numb out. You’ll fall into an old pattern. You’ll react in a way you wish you hadn’t.
Self-love isn’t the absence of those experiences.
It’s what happens after you notice them.
Can you pause before entering the familiar shame spiral?
Can you recognize what happened without attacking yourself?
Can you offer yourself compassion?
Can you ask what you needed in that moment?
And can you choose differently the next time?
That is the practice.
You return.
Again and again.
Your Body Deserves Your Love Too
We often talk about self-love as a mindset practice, but our relationship with our bodies matters too.
For years, I approached my body through discipline and control. I had been a fitness competitor, tracked my food closely, and followed rigid workout plans.
Healing my relationship with my body required asking different questions.
Instead of:
“What do I need to fix?”
I started asking:
“What does my body need from me today?”
Sometimes the answer was lifting weights.
Sometimes it was yoga.
Sometimes it was hiking.
Sometimes it was walking.
And sometimes it was rest.
Self-love changed movement from something I did to control my body into something I could do in partnership with it.
You Don’t Have to Earn Rest
This may be one of the hardest self-love lessons for high achievers.
You do not have to complete your entire to-do list before you’re allowed to rest.
You don’t need to prove that you worked hard enough.
You don’t need to take care of everyone else first.
You get to rest because you’re tired.
You’re allowed to experience ease because you’re human.
If you can only love yourself when you’ve been productive, achieved something, looked a certain way, or behaved perfectly, that love is conditional.
Real self-love asks us to practice staying on our own side even when we aren’t at our best.
The Most Important Relationship You’ll Ever Build
I remember the first time I truly felt my own love.
I was hiking at Cathedral Rock in Sedona in 2023, preparing for a retreat I was about to lead. I had been doing so much work on myself, and suddenly I felt this overwhelming sense of gratitude, appreciation, and love for myself wash through my body.
I remember thinking:
This is what my love feels like.
I had spent so much of my life looking outward.
And suddenly, I could feel what it was like to receive love from myself.
That experience didn’t happen because I perfected self-love.
It happened because I had practiced it.
Through mirror work.
Through compassion.
Through boundaries.
Through listening to my body.
Through learning to validate myself.
Through choosing myself.
And through returning home every time I noticed that I had left.
That’s what true self-love means to me now.
It isn’t perfection.
It’s the commitment to keep coming back to yourself, loving every version of you, and building the relationship with yourself that you’ve always deserved.