Loving You

I am so excited to share with you that my new book Falling in Love with You: Nuggets of wisdom for a heartfelt life paperback is now available on our website and Amazon. The blog photo is the front cover of the book and the forward is by Neale Donald Walsch.

It will be available on Amazon as an eBook soon. The paperback from my website will be ready for shipping in two weeks.  As you can see, this would be a wonderful holiday gift for everyone you love and care about. In honor of the new book I offer you this blog about meeting yourself in your own heart.

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A friend of mine has been on a journey to “find love.”  He was married for a short time and has been in a number of relationships since his divorce. But until recently he has never found “the one.” When a woman he has known since childhood came back into his life, he fell deeply in love, but she is unwilling to make a commitment. Since he believes she is the “love of his life,” he is truly hurting and feels like he may never find true love again if the two of them do not get together.

We all spend a lot of time looking for love from other people while trying to be acceptable enough so they will love us. While it is wonderful to love and be loved, there is even a more essential and important love we desperately long for and that is to fall in love with ourselves. I invited my friend to consider the possibility that as he cultivates coming home to his own heart, he won’t feel the desperate need for love outside of himself.

We can get glimpses of this deep and abiding love inside of us when we love other people or when they love us, but our journey of awakening is truly about discovering that the source of the love we long for is inside of us. And in order to know this love, you discover how to allow everything you have done (everything!) and every part of yourself that you have mistreated, feared or even loathed to be enfolded back into your heart.

I shared with my friend an excerpt from the children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams. It is a beautiful story of a stuffed rabbit who desires to become “Real” through the love of its owner, a little boy. The rabbit was a wonderful playmate for the boy, but now the boy has grown up and left his toys behind. The Velveteen Rabbit has become worn, and he feels abandoned and rejected. In this excerpt, he is talking to the Skin Horse, who is the wisest and oldest toy in the nursery:

“What is REAL?” the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” 

 “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” 

 “Does it hurt?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit. 

 “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” 

 “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Although the Skin Horse is talking about the rabbit receiving love from the child, I believe becoming “Real” in this story is a metaphor for self-love. To me, becoming Real is when we can really, really love ourselves, even when we are going through big challenges or feel we don’t deserve our own love, or the love of those who have left us, like the little boy. Those are the times when we most need our own loving kindness.

So, how do you learn to open your heart to you – all of you? How do you learn to love yourself when you are so often unkind and even cruel to yourself? How do you love yourself just as you are? One of the ways I have learned to fall in love with myself is to ask life for help. When I am having a challenging day and I realize that I am berating myself or experiencing negative self-talk, I might say, “Life show me how to love myself exactly as I am, even the parts I don’t like or have hated my whole life.” I then let that question go and know that life will answer it in the right time and in the right way.

Meeting all the abandoned, rejected or wounded parts inside of you, including your shame, anger, irritation, jealousy, ineptness, anxiousness, loneliness and despair can, at times, be very challenging until you learn the skills of simply meeting yourself as you are. And, like the Skin Horse said to the Velveteen Rabbit, this doesn’t happen all at once and it hurts sometimes. But it is the safest and most healing thing you will ever do.

Stephen Levine, my main mentor, said many times, “The only sane response is love.” Know there is absolutely nothing inside of you that doesn’t deserve to be met with your own kindness and understanding. So, when you are ready, place your hand over your heart and ask life to show you how to be Real. There is no one in the world more deserving of your true love and open heart than you!