Texting Love

Lately I have been working on loving myself at a deeper level.  I have been learning to love myself for like ten years, but now I am really digging my self-loathing out by the roots. Yes, we all have it, or some degree of it inside ourselves, even if we had a “good childhood”, even if our parents did a “good job”, it doesn’t take much for us as infants and toddlers to get the idea that there is somehow something wrong with us, or that we are not good enough.

By the way, when I say “learning”, what I really mean is remembering Who I Really Am.  I am made in the spitting image of God(dess).  I am God(dess), and so are you.  We all already love ourselves more than we can imagine.  It’s just that when we came here, we forgot. We forgot a lot of things, but it’s all by design.

My newest round of remembering involves noticing each time I start to blame myself for something, or each time I have one of those self-deprecating thoughts, I bathe myself in a sea of absolute compassion and love.  I feel it surrounding me, supporting me and holding me up like a hammock.

One of the things I often tell my clients is that others are our mirror.  So when people come in and complain that their loved ones treat them like crap, I ask them to look at how they are treating themselves.  I hold myself to the same standards.

I’ve been having this texting conversation with my daughter.  She wants me to take her and her friend shopping on Friday night.  At first I said my automatic “sure, honey”.  Then I texted again, and told her I’ve had this sinus infection and didn’t know if I’d be feeling up to it.  Notice the theme here, of loving myself.  The remembering I’ve been doing was helping me to remember to take care of myself first, and then see what I have left over to give to others.  That is true love, for myself and, believe it or not, for her as well.

Okay, now here’s the big moment: rather than pressure me to do it anyway, regardless of how I feel, she said, “ok thanks”.  And when she texted me last night to see what the outlook was, and I was still non-committal, she told me she may be going with her friend’s mom instead because they really have to go shopping.   And she sounded just a bit apologetic about it, about leaving me on Friday night.  BUT, she was still doing what she wanted to do, still putting herself first, which I applaud.  In one, she was being both my mirror and she was showing that she’d learned from me.  I was treating myself more lovingly, and she was treating me more lovingly, and she was showing what she’d learned.

And then came the moment when I realized texting is not so bad.  Some in my generation, including me, have had a big resistance to texting.  She has this new nickname for me, honey comb.  It’s like a joke in our house; she thinks it’s funny that I call her “honey” instead of her real name.  So now she calls me honey, and she one-upped me.  I felt her love coming through the text.  She said “Okay, honey comb, feel better.  You are my favorite person ♥.”  And I told her that the feeling was mutual.