Note: This is an actual letter I wrote to myself during a challenging, yet hopeful period of my life. It references some specific details that only I would fully understand but I wanted to share it as an example of how you may choose to speak to yourself. It specifically addresses the ways I felt unprepared for healthy relationships with others based on the psychologically damaging ways I was taught to fear others and myself. In reading this, invite you to consider the fact that you are, and will always be your best lover. What vibration of love will you offer yourself? How much patience? How much compassion? How much understanding will you offer yourself based on your specific past and wounds? How will you gently encourage yourself to keep moving forward?
A Loving Reminder to the Love of my Life; Me
My Dear,
I see you being hard on yourself regarding the ways you have had to learn about healthy and unhealthy relationship spaces. I see you wanting, still, to protect the memory of your parents by not facing the fact that they simply didn’t prepare YOU well for the life YOU would be living at least on the relationship front. I applaud you for finding gratitude in the ways they have prepared you well. And I encourage you to not see their failure in this area as something that makes them unworthy, just human. I know you forgive them. AND you also get to look realistically at the holes that existed so that you can now take this part of your development into your own hands.
You had to wade through a lot of fear regarding relationships overall; they were always mired in fear. And your own experience with your parents, though feeling safe at times, was often characterized by fear-mongering and restriction of your essential expression.
There are two things I want you to note here:
You came to know relationships and safety as something that restricted you; &
Because of that restriction, you didn’t actually get to experience or know deeply valuable parts of yourself.
I acknowledge the guilt and grief you feel having been less than loving to those you claimed to love. You have hurt others and as you grow in awareness, you feel deep shame. But look at you now. You wanted space to question your identity more, and you acknowledged that your parents were unable to offer you that space. You made a choice for yourself. You chose yourself. Unlike when you were a kid and always chose your parents, you chose yourself. You chose to find ways to experience, and therefore mimic a deeper love.
Now, to the belief that being yourself will always be pitted against relationship. This belief is what is hampering you now.
Can you maybe acknowledge that in the past, the cart came before the horse and so of course that was your experience? In many ways, your parents taught you to consider them before yourself. Your church taught you to consider God before yourself. Religion taught you to consider your husband before yourself. Society told you to consider its culture before yourself. You have been taught, sometimes brutally, to deny yourself in the service of others. But time and time again you have felt an imbalance. How could you serve others if you are simply an empty meat sack? You are not a robot, you are an animated being... it is only through your BEing, that you could serve others.
Can we maybe try to switch this belief, my dear one? Can we chose to operate by the belief: to know oneself is to love? Those who have loved you best knew themselves, that is why they could love you. You know yourself, that is why you can love.
Let us adopt this belief and rewrite our DNA:
My relationships are beautifully in sync with my being. All I create is beautifully in sync with my being. I accept the free flow of goodness through every part of my life.
With Love Everlasting,
Your Beloved.