Good point, good friend.
I love myself with a technique I call my Cup Runneth Over technique (or CRO for short). I'll explain what that is in a minute.
First, let me confess something. Yesterday, I spent more time than I care to admit going all the way back to the beginning of this blog and reading from oldest to newest. No, I didn't get through the whole thing (and yes, I did find it embarrassingly entertaining). One thing that stuck out for me though was how frenetic my pace always seemed to be. I seemed to be doing everything I possibly could to get it right, to be perfect, to please them all, to get the gold star. But underneath it all, there was a low hum, the tension that is depicted in scary movies with cellos playing minor chords. The feeling you get when the stupid cheerleader is being slowly dragged down a hallway and then BAM! The killer pops out and she's dragged into a closet, her throat promptly slashed.
What I'm saying is, anyone reading those older posts could see what I couldn't see at the time, despite many of my loved ones (and my therapist) saying it often - if you keep going at this pace, you're going to pop.
I had a secret weapon, though, you see. I had a release valve. And it was that whenever I needed to, I would find an excuse to numb all the way out, in food. I haven't had a drink or a drug since 1995, but that doesn't mean I don't know how to make good use of a stockpile of sugar and processed carbs. And that was my MO for many, many years - be good, get it all done, do all the things, hold on, hold it in, push, push, push, push, aaaand.....RELEASE. The problem is that it not only kept me from ever getting to a healthy weight, it also fed my insecurity and my feeling of failure around that topic (because I still felt it was up to me to get it done, remember) and it also made it a thousand times harder to do all the things when I was fueling my body with toxins and sending my insulin levels on the roller coaster from hell.
In April 2018, I started working with my mentor, Nanilea Diamond, the founder of the Sacred Feminine Leadership Blueprint and the person who introduced me to the idea of giving and living from a place of "cup runneth over." The idea that if we make sure we are taking really good care of ourselves, tending to our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs first and completely, then what we have available to give to others is so much more and feels so much better. If I'm being honest, I was drawn to Nanilea because she was like a fairy princess, a mermaid and Aphrodite all rolled into one. I wanted what she had. I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin like her. I thought if I could learn from her, maybe I could lose this weight once and for all, and then I'd have the energy to make myself look beautiful and feel beautiful and I'd be happy.
What happened instead was that I was taken on a ride that never ended. It was a ride that would take me to see and heal the deepest wounds I'd been carrying, some of them ancestral, and would fling me up to my highest heights to get a taste of what my full glory on this planet would look like, and I even got to experience it for a moment, here and there. And let me tell you, there's no drug in the world like the high of feeling like you're doing, being and experiencing exactly what your soul came to this planet for.
Today, loving myself unconditionally doesn't have to do with just accepting my body. The truth is, I am so happy for my body and what it can do and the luscious curves that I was able to keep relatively smooth with years of strength training. There are things about it I don't like - the pain I still feel when I walk up the stairs and the way I can feel what's between my chin and my chest when I'm sitting and typing up this post. But the things I like and don't like are just a small part of why I love myself so absolutely and completely. I love my consistency. I love my determination. I love my spunk. I love my optimism and my faith in everything, even the things I don't like. My faith in Divine, even when She's not giving me everything I want. I love my ability to see the possibility for miracles and magic in the midst of tears.
And even beyond that, I've learned that loving myself is an action, not a feeling. So every day, I make a list of the ways I will love myself, knowing that if I commit to these things, I will feel loved at the end of the day. I will feel satisfied. I call this my Cup Runneth Over list, because when I do these things, my cup is full and I can give from a place of Cup Runneth Over.
Today, these were the things on my CRO list:
- Walk with my friend (done)
- Drink at least 2 liters of water (done)
- Meditate (done)
- Journal (done)
- Take supplements (done)
- Eat healthy food in the proper amounts and percentages (done)
And just like that, I loved myself today.
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