Self Love

Love - an indescribable passionate feeling that is felt by someone for or with someone or something. So what is self-love? Self-love is loving your self: body, mind, and soul. If you're a mom like me, self-love is probably one of the last things on your to do list.

Just over a year ago my life took a completely unexpected turn when (after years of thinking it impossible) I became pregnant with my first biological child. By the third month of my pregnancy, when I was thought about telling everyone the news, my step-kids' mom was arrested for child negligence and lost custody of them. Within 2 weeks she was dead. In less than a year I became a mom to 3 kids at very different stages of their lives and with 2 of them having suffered the loss of their mom. I had also graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition Science. Here I was thinking I was in the homestretch of starting my career and little did I know that that wasn't where my life was meant to go. I was going to have to devote my life to raising my 3 new kids.

At times I feel like I am overwhelmed and worried that I am not doing a good job of raising them. Sometimes I want to pay 100% attention to my first baby and am worried I might miss out on something she does. Sometimes I fear that the kids are going to struggle with things and I am going to blame myself for failing somewhere along the way. You might struggle with similar doubts and worries. You might blame yourself for things out of your control like I sometimes do.

For those reasons and so many more, this is why it is so important to invest time for my SELF. I have to practice positive affirmations, positive self-talk, mindfulness, and take a minute or 10, or an hour or 2 if I am lucky to focus on grounding mySELF, finding mySELF, returning to the NOW again. Meditation can be hard when you have to tend to a baby so I like to go on walks and get out in nature. Mindfulness is something you might have heard of lately as I see a lot of magazines starting to talk about it. I learned mindfulness from meditation. It's being in the moment, aware of what you are doing at the present moment, tapping into your senses and feeling, touching, smelling; not thinking about anything else, not letting your mind wander; it's very much meditation. Meditation doesn't have to be sitting lotus style with your eyes closed for an hour. Meditation can be just enthralling yourself 100% into whatever it is you are doing, working on, cooking, drawing, sewing, playing with your kids, etc.

I look at the unexpected events that happen in life as challenges that are going to teach me new things. It's so easy to get caught up in being stressed out and letting negative things get the best of you. But you have to think about what a disservice that is to your health.

Be kind to yourself. Be the one to treat yourself right if you feel that the world around you is treating you wrong. Eat right, get moving, and do something you love at least once a day. Feel like you don't have "time" to do any of those things? Let me help you find the time. Eventually you might get to a state of mind where no matter what you are doing, you will find joy in doing whatever it is you're doing. Sure some things are much more enjoyable than others, like going to pay a parking ticket is not so much fun, but you don't have to be in misery. Happiness is not tangible, it's not a place, it's a state of mind where you find good in situations. Once you find that inner peace you'll being able to accept that whether the conditions are good or bad they just ARE and you're okay with that. Love yourself and one another.