I have been thinking lately about my upbringing and the parents who raised me.  My father was gone most of the time deployed out at sea somewhere and so it was my mother who primarily raised me.  I honestly do not know what it was about me that bothered my mother so but I just didn’t fit into her “ideal” of womanhood (neither size, personality, behavior).  I was labeled by my early teens as the “trouble maker” and the one who always talked back.  I didn’t see myself as a trouble maker nor did I see myself as someone who had the nerve to talk back to a mother such as mine!  But that is how she viewed me and, in the end, it left me feeling unloved and unlovable because my own mother found fault with me, I was imperfect.  I had this message so deeply ingrained in me that it took years to truly overcome those messages of old and move into a bright, happy, secure-in-self-love future.

It’s just so sad that some walk this earth feeling as if no one has ever loved them, truly loved them.  They have lived existences I cannot recognize and wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  Some live in their heads unable to see and feel the love available to them; some just won’t open their eyes to what’s so plainly in from of them.  For whatever reason, it seems to me that it’s easier to deny love than it is to accept love.  Have we become people who choose to question love instead of openly welcoming it?  Have we all somewhere along the lines received the message that we are all defective and not loveable – not deserving of freeing, soul-lifting love??

I was told for many years that my “picker was broken” – meaning that I always chose men who were either not emotionally available or that wanted to use me all the time pretending they loved me – when I was just meeting a need of theirs until they found someone new to use and abuse.  I had so little faith and belief in myself that I subjected myself to bad love.  I did not know the extent to which I’d taken in the words of my youth, “You are not loveable.”  I believed no one would ever love me or truly want me forever in their hearts and the men I dated all seemed to bear out this one simple self-fulfilling prophecy.  You see, that’s what it was, a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When I took in the messages and words of my youth, I took them in completely and truly felt and believed that I didn’t deserve to take up space or breathe air or receive love because I’d been labeled “bad” and that’s just who I was…bad.  “Bad” people don’t deserve love.  While love may have been staring me in the face – I’d deny it just to make sure I maintained that “I wasn’t loveable” message.  In adulthood, I did not “own” the fact that I could define myself any way I wanted; instead I slipped into the old messages and managed my life in a way so that no one, truly, ever had the chance to try to love me.

For someone to carry the message that you aren’t right for this world, you didn’t deserve to be here, just exist but don’t be noticed, don’t draw attention to oneself – it’s hard moving into the adult years believing that you have a future or that there is goodness and grace down the road, if you are only patient.  It’s hard to believe that anything you do is of value or has worth – because if it comes from someone who is worthless, how can their work be worthwhile?  I lived the belief that I was unlovable and thus fulfilled my own prophecy by not finding true love till later in life – after I had found my own self-love and discovered that what I’d been told growing up was just a bunch of bunk!

Inside each and every one of us lays a seed, a spark of belief that if nurtured can result in true self-love and when we realize this, we begin the walk away from falsehoods put in our heads at a time when we knew no better.  Some of us need to seek professionals to lead us to new thoughts and beliefs – sustainable thoughts and beliefs.  Others need to walk the path of self-discovery on their own – uncovering as they are ready the truths that are part of their lives.  Some of those truths aren’t so pretty and our tendency is to run instead of confronting them.  But hang in there, every obstacle you’ve overcome in your life and every obstacle you will face in life IS NOT insurmountable!  Especially when those obstacles are self-created in your own head and not based in the truth of who you truly are!

I beg of you, do not ever allow anyone but yourself to define who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in, what you deserve.  God did not create us to live in fear and pain and the knowledge that we aren’t good enough.  We are all good enough and deserve to be loved as we want to be loved.  It’s worth holding out until you find that unconditional love you may not have yet received in your life – your OWN unconditional love.  Until or unless you love yourself fully, take care of you fully, allow yourself to be loved fully – until you stop fighting the messages in your head – you will live in the place of fear and the sad knowledge that you “don’t deserve love.”  We ALL deserve love; some are just harder to love than others!

Today I let others have their opinion of me because trying to change another’s mind is seriously not my task to do today.  Today my job is to find self-love, self-acceptance and to be ready and open for the next person I can love and who will love me in return.  Today my choice is to not live with old messages that want entrance into my brain to repeat all the negative stuff doled out in my youth.  Today I live in the present and deal with what’s in front of me; the rest is up to God and His “staff” of angels.  Today it’s my job to trust in the process and that I am being led to my highest good.  Today I know I am lovable, not just because I exist but because I know now true love, lasting love, lifetime love.  I could not have achieved this place had I not let go of the belief that I was, heart and soul, unlovable.

WE ARE ALL LOVEABLE!  Know that.  Feel that.  Think on that.  Breathe that in.  It is truth.

We all deserve love!

Part of my own self-love today is recognizing when someone wants to feed me false information about myself – I no longer live on what others think of me.  Who I am, what I am today is based on my beliefs today and not of the past.  No one can define me but myself and this person, me – today – is lovable and deserving of love.  Seek love.  Seek the peace that love provides.  I keep in mind today that my God is a forgiving God and if God is capable of forgiving me, He’s more than capable of forgiving you and taking away the negative thoughts you’ve carried for too long.  Try to give the negativity to God and live a life of belief and love.  You can’t live in grace until you’ve released you inner demons.