Uncovering the Blocks to Self-Love

Today, I am grateful to have learned from my daughter. She has wisdom that few possess at 11-years-old. She often asks me random questions about life. This evening as I cleaned the kitchen after our dinner, she was flipping through a Parenting magazine. She looked up from her spot on the sofa and asked me if I knew what she didn't like about transgendered people. The question surprised me, coming from my young sage, and I tensed, ready to preach, but she followed it with, "that they don't just accept themselves as they are." Ah.

So, we talked about cultural conditioning and societal programming (a little soapbox, but she seems to welcome it still). I asked her to imagine what it would be like if she were raised to believe there was something inherently wrong with her, that she wasn't normal. I asked her if she would want to change, in that case, to be "like everybody else." And she said, "No, I wouldn't want to change anything about me, because then I wouldn't be me."

Perfect. <3

Yet, this is the same girl who tells me that she doesn't love herself. Her actions and her other words tell me differently. Somewhere she has picked up the "agreement" that one should not love themselves. That this is ego. She may well have picked it up from me in her early childhood, as I was not mySelf then. So, it is society that tells us we are unlovable; that we are not good enough for our own love, respect, and appreciation. Or, Society tells us that it simply isn't allowed, or ok, to love ourselves. And this is a lie.

The truth is that we *are* love. You *are* love. You can't be undeserving of something you already are. I am grateful to my eldest daughter for being my teacher tonight. And every night.

Tell me, where did you learn that you shouldn't/couldn't love yourself? Be Courage (yes, be "courage") and share. <3