Love Every Part #ModernLoveContest

Love Every Part

Sometimes we grow up in an environment of conditional love—I'm pretty sure I did—and we fall into the belief that love needs to be earned. That we can't be loved simply for being ourselves. This is how I became a people-pleaser. I thought if I could just do what everyone wanted, I'd be loved.

I wondered incessantly what people thought of me, but I never could crawl into their heads to find out. The sad thing was I never put much importance into what I thought about myself. People-pleasers rarely do, because we're so busy trying to earn that adoration.

This went on well into adulthood. Always trying to mold myself into what others wanted. I did gain some wisdom as I got older, but that sense of "not good enough" was a persistent beast that liked to stand up and stretch into my psyche every now and then.

Then came a pivotal moment. A book, actually. You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay spoke to me in a way no other book had, and made me see how my thoughts could either lift me up or set me up for repeated failure and unhappiness. One idea in particular caught my attention: how believing that love was conditional meant we never loved ourselves in our entirety. We only loved certain parts of ourselves—the parts that seemed to earn respect from others—if we ever loved ourselves at all.

The author believed in affirmations, which is saying aloud phrases that uplift you or reconstruct some of your self-sabotaging beliefs. It seemed kind of silly to me, but I tried it anyway. It's not like I had to do it in front of anyone, so no one could witness how weird I looked. I just said them to myself when I was alone.

Something unexpected happened.

"I love every part of me."

Why did that particular phrase make me feel strange?

I said it again. "I love every part of me."

I began to cry.

I was baffled, and yet I wasn't. That small, neglected part of me—the malnourished child that had been languishing in the dark from lack of affection—finally felt the warmth of a ray of sunlight, at long last.

I repeated it one more time. "I love every part of me."

I sobbed like I'd just lost my best friend. But that wasn't it. I had just found my best friend. Me. These weren't tears of sadness. It was relief. Joy. Elation that finally, finally, I was no longer going to inflict conditional love on myself. I was going to accept myself. Love myself—every part—without hesitation.

It was very gradual, the changes. Over the course of numerous months. Maybe even years. My confidence grew. I tried posting videos of myself for the first time ever. I accepted that I was awkward, that it was okay because that was just who I was. I loved that part of me too. And for the first time—maybe ever—I felt peace in side.