Beautiful

I used to hate looking in the mirror.

Sometimes I still do.

Fairly early in my recovery, though, someone asked me if I ever did anything just for me.

I had to really think. At the time - no, I didn't do anything just for myself. Everything was for everyone else.

There's nothing wrong with doing things for other people. But sometimes the person doing those things gets lost in the process, and ends up resenting the very people she/he is doing things for. Burnout is a very real phenomenon, and it's been my experience that mothers tend to burn out thinking that "that's what moms do. They give."

Here's a quote from a daily meditation booklet called "Keep it Simple." There are some very poignant thoughts in it.

Beauty is not caused. It is.--- Emily Dickinson
Probably, there have been many times when we thought we weren’t beautiful. We thought we were ugly. We thought we were bad people. This is a natural part of addiction. Our program tells us we’re good, we’re beautiful. Do we believe this? Do we accept this part of the program?
Beauty is an attitude, just as self-hate is an attitude. We need to keep the attitude that we’re beautiful. We owe it to ourselves and to those around us. And, yes, it’s true that you must love yourself before you can love others. . . We have to love and see ourselves as beautiful, before we can give it to others.

What we have here is a return to the "Love your neighbor as yourself" concept. Not "more than yourself." AS yourself. It follows that if one doesn't love oneself, one cannot love others.

Self-love is viewed by the church as suspect at best. It's equated with pride, arrogance, self-absorption. I believe that the church has done its members a disservice. There are three types of relationships that are important to cultivate: (1) with God, (2) with oneself and (3) with others. All three are crucial, and they are essential to keep in that order.

When I first started examining my life to see the roots of my self-defeating and destructive behaviors, I realized that there were messages that I had heard all my life: lies that hurting people told me so often that I had learned to believe them, events that happened to me that led me to doubt myself, my place in the world. As I looked deeper, I detected the presence of a very frightened, very lonely little girl in my psyche - about 8 years old. That little girl was me. She didn't trust anyone, especially herself. She thought people were dangerous, that she was defective, that nobody wanted or loved her, and that she would always end up getting hurt. So I wrote down a set of statements that my adult self knew to be true, things I would want my own child to know. And I began to speak to that little girl. I told her the things that she needed to know. She was valuable. She was beautiful. People could love her just the way she was. The things people told her, did to her, made her do - these were not who she was. These things were not her fault; she didn't do anything wrong. She was unique, special.

She shied away at first. She resisted. But over time, as I kept affirming her worth, she started to respond. Little by little, she began to let go of the guilt and the shame of those years of repression and abuse. As she did, she - I - was able to make room in my heart for other people. As I learned how to love and accept myself more, I was better able to love and accept others.

Some days are better than others. But at least when I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror in the morning, I don't cringe like I used to.
It's a process.