The Pursuit of Happiness: A Journey Toward Self Love

Every Journey Starts With A Single Step

For the record, I believe, that a journey like this never really ends. Well, when I die it will end I suppose, but in the spirit of focusing more on the positive aspects of this concept we will just ignore that truth for right now.

Learning to love ones self might be one of our greatest life challenges. At least, I know it has been for me, and I can think of a number of women and men who can relate for certain. It is a long and arduous journey, but worth it. Sometimes it helps to hear a little anecdote about someone else's journey. It might be the one thing that sparks hope inside your heart and pushes toward active pursuit of happiness.

My story begins around age 1. As in most stories of personal growth, it typically starts with pain. At this young age I was already beginning a path of pain and heartache. I don't remember the details (I was only 1 after all...), but around this age was when my mother decided it was time to leave an abusive relationship with my biological father only to fall into the arms of another man who became emotionally and sometimes physically abusive as well. So, you could say my journey starts with abandonment. The people I needed most in my life to be there, to love me unconditionally, well they weren't there. My mom did her best, and she did enough to counteract some of the harms caused, but it wasn't enough. My biological father disappeared from my life and later only became a part of it because he wouldn't have to pay child support while I was visiting. He was mean and mostly made me feel like my existence was as annoying as a fly buzzing in your face. He was an alcoholic and very abusive both emotionally and physically towards his romantic partners/wives. He was never directly mean to me or abusive, but his overall tone of "God I wish I didn't have to deal with you" kind of set the tone for how I felt he felt about me. He forgot my birthdays. He did not call. And like a foolish child, I longed for his love. I yearned for him to care about me...to validate that my existence meaningful and important. I yearned for his love until I was about 13. Then at that point I gave up.

Meanwhile, my step-father started out as a pretty decent guy. He cared about me when I was little and treated me like I was his own child. He and my mother got married and went on to have two more children. Over the years, he progressively became a giant asshole. He too was an alcoholic and extremely emotionally abusive. I longed for his approval. He told me I was fat all the time and teased me about the way I looked. When I actually did have something I felt confident about (like singing) he always found some fault in it. I became a perfectionist who was terrified of failure. Because the message I had been given for the majority of my life was "If you aren't perfect you are worth nothing and no one can love you". I spent most of my childhood depressed and angry. I wasn't a nice girl. I was mean, a bully, and hateful. I cried a lot and screamed often. I don't remember many happy things at all. I want to. I don't know if I just don't remember them or they just weren't there.

I spent a lot of time hating myself and being critical. I would stand in front of the mirror on a daily basis just hating myself. I would say things to myself that I would never ever say to another human being. I would cry. Like really cry.

This self-hate and absence of confidence impacted all aspects of my life. I made terrible choices in relationships. I believe no one would ever really love me so I would sabotage things sometimes to fulfill my own prophecy of being unworthy and force people to abandon me. I avoided trying new things for fear of failure. I was easily manipulated and taken advantage of. And I spent a lot of time in my head worrying about what other people thought of me.

My mom always tried to tell me that I was perfect just the way I was. That I was good inside and kind. That I was worthy of love. But I never believed her. And it even got to the point where I would get angry and lash out at her if she even tried to convince me of these things. I could not believe them. There was too much evidence to the contrary. But I must say now that I am so glad she kept trying to convince me...because it was this small voice deep down inside, screaming as loud as possible, that helped me find my footing eventually and guided me (albeit very slowly) toward loving myself.

It's really kind of sad to put in perspective exactly how much of my life I have spent hating myself. 25 years of loathing. 25 years. If I live to be 100, that's a quarter of my life.

The pivot point for me began in graduate college. Grad school can make or break you, not just academically, but emotionally as well. It most certainly put me to the test in just about every way possible. It was the biggest challenge to my self-doubt that I had ever really faced.

I chose a helping profession so in that I began attending classes to learn how to provide counseling support for future students. Little did I know that it would change me in ways I never dreamed. My first real challenge came in an unlikely place...group counseling class. I don't remember exactly how it came about, but there was an activity where the group wrote a note to someone else in the group saying positive things about them. None of these people knew me, I mean not really. We were acquaintances sharing a class together. We barely knew each other at all. But the words written on that little blue post-it note hit my heart like a freight train. This person didn't know me from Adam, but somehow she was able to see positive things in me and about me that I refused to recognize for myself. This was the first crack in my self-made, hateful armor. I kept that post-it note on my vanity mirror for several years after that. I vowed to keep it up there until I believed with my own heart that those words about me were true. It stayed on my mirror for 7 years.

Evolving from the person I was to the person I am now was not easy, and clearly it was not fast. But I was committed to finding true happiness, and I knew the only way to find that was to fall in love with the most important person in my life...me.

Finding Solace in Fitness

My journey of fitness started with the desire to lose weight. This, in my humble opinion, is the wrong way to approach it. If this is the reason you lose weight and you only do it when you feel fat, then you are going to be riding that awful roller coaster for a long time my friend. And I assure you, it is not thrilling in the least. I found that it actually made me feel worse about myself. I was always starting over and in doing so always seeming to myself like I am a failure. Mix in with that roller coaster some very unhealthy eating (or not eating) habits and you're really in for a rough ride. It isn't fun, fulfilling, or rewarding. I don't recommend this approach.

I was a size 5 once. "Skinny fat" is what I've heard it called. I took ephedrine and pretty much lived on Starbucks and booze. I counted calories, not nutrition. i was skinny, and rather gorgeous (if I might say so myself), but I only looked good on the outside. On the inside I was a wreck with self-hate and suffocating self-hate. Then my grandfather died. My heart shattered and I fell into a downward spiral of bingeing and depression. I gained a lot of weight very quickly (it is much easier to gain it than it is to lose).

I really don't know for certain the exact day I began to look at my body and not hate it. Sure I was overweight, but at some point I stopped caring about that. Not in the sense that I just "let myself go" but in the sense that I could look at my chubs and not crumble with despair. I looked at them and thought to myself, "I am in control of this. It is not in control of me. And I will not be defined by my body."

When I got pregnant I got HUGE! I was already overweight then I packed on a baby and shit ton of amniotic fluid. I approached 200 pounds. I was terrified. I could not let myself go past that number. I just couldn't.

During my pregnancy I was also blessed with gestational diabetes (GD). This was sort of a wake-up call for me. I learned that women who have GD are 50% (50%!!) more likely to develop full on diabetes in the future if they do not care for themselves. During my pregnancy, with GD, I was forced to eat healthy and have a restricted diet. I did it for my child. I did it for me. And I discovered...it really isn't all that bad. Eating healthier made me feel better both emotionally and physically. It also altered my palette, so the less healthy foods became less appealing to me.

After the birth of my son I did the ever so painful Insanity program by Shaun T (who is freaking awesome btw). I also started doing yoga.

Now, yoga is special to me. The first time I did a class with Ally Hamilton (who is one of the most amazing humans on Earth...in my opinion) and it was like she knew my heart. She spoke to me in savasana and I wept. She hit me right in the feels. I have been in love with her and the practice ever since. Yoga does more for me than nurture my physical self, but it also nurtures my soul. Each minute I spend with my mat is a minute of exhalation. All the tightness in my heart is let loose. I breathe. I feel. I challenge myself. I stretch. It is sort of a spiritual experience for me as well as a natural drug. It has become part of my life. It's not just something I've picked up that I'll do until I hit that size 5 again (which is probably not very likely to happen since I now actually have muscle mass instead of just squishies). It is important to me. I make time for it. I need it.

Then there's running. Oh god I love running. I started running about 5 years ago because stress was causing me to have panic attacks again and I needed an outlet. I'm a bottler. I tend to stuff my stress down until there's no more room and I just explode with rage. So, instead of stuffing, I began running. Running got me out in nature (which is also cathartic for me), it wasn't stationary and dull, and, like yoga, became a drug. After a good run I feel like a great weight has been lifted. I feel alive. I feel young. I feel focused and inspired (in fact, this post was inspired by my morning run today!). Running makes me feel good. I can continually challenge myself and I get to feel accomplished. And WOW what a feeling that is. After doing my first fun run this fall I felt like I was on top of the world. I can do anything!

Fitness has become my therapy. Well, one of them anyway. I struggle with a lot of issues in addition to self-loathing and doubt so I have a lot of coping practices in my little bag of tricks, which is actually really important for anyone. This way, if you are for some reason unable to use one of your favorite coping activities, you can do a different one and still get the relief you need.

Sometimes I Slip

The other day I was getting ready to take my son somewhere and my hair was not cooperating so I threw it up in a bun, which also was not cooperating. I didn't feel super thrilled with the result and started having negative thoughts, criticizing how I looked and how others might look at me and judge me negatively. I caught myself and said out loud, "No, you stop that! You don't care what those people think about your damn hair. You are more than just your hair so knock it off. You know better than that." I talk to myself out loud a lot when I need a good pep talk or scolding. It works for me. I'm not ashamed. 

But the bottom line here is that I am human. And as a human I am inherently riddled with flaws. But those flaws are what makes me me. Sometimes I slip, fall, stumble...but as long as I get back up again and hold my head up high I am going to be ok. I remind myself all the time that what I say to myself should be the same as what I would say to a stranger, to my son, and to people I love. Loving myself is just as important as loving anyone else. In fact, it might be even more important. Because I truly believe that when you do not love yourself, you approach life and its situations in a completely different way. The language becomes "I can" instead of "I can't"; "I'll try." instead of "I'm too afraid to fail to try."; "I am worthy of love and being treated with respect and dignity." instead of "I deserve this punishment and no one can love me."

To Be Continued

This journey of self-discovery and self-love doesn't end. At least it won't for me. I'll never stop trying to better myself. I'll never give up on myself ever again. And while I walk this path it is my hope that I will greet others along the way, and they will join me on their own journey to fall in love with the most important person in their life; themselves.