This week over at the
My Heart Speaks Facebook Fan Page we’re talking about self-love which is defined as the instinct or desire to promote one’s own well-being or to further one’s own interest; a feeling of self-respect and the knowledge of personal worth. This sounds easy but in reality it’s not for a lot of women and girls. Many struggle with the concept of loving themselves as if they are not worthy of their own love. I personally still battle loving myself the way I know I can, but I’m better than I use to be and I know that I still have work to do.
I struggled the most in my teen and early adult years with self-love because I didn’t have that knowledge of personal worth as a result of low self-esteem. I’d been sexually abused and raped more than once so I didn’t regard myself as worthy of anything good. Instead I poured “love” into boys and men and further took myself away from my own love; I victimized myself.
Recently, like in the last two years, I’ve begun a “Loving Larie Campaign” that started when I read Genesis 1:26-27. In this passage we are told that God created us in His image and I thought to myself, “Well there’s nothing unlovable or unworthy about God and since I was created in His image then there’s nothing unlovable or unworthy about me!” When I feel myself slipping out of self-love I remind myself of this.
My favorite quote from this week is, "Don't you dare, for one more second, surround yourself with people who are not aware of the greatness that you are." ~Jo Blackwell-Preston~ So in order for others to be aware of the greatness that I am, I must be aware of it first…
You can read more in detail about my lack of self-love, self-esteem, and self-worth and how I carried it over into my adult life and into marriage in my second book titled,
My Heart Speaks...of Boys and a Girl.
