Self love

It’s hard to find a feeling more overwhelming than the love I feel for my children. The picture was taken when my daughter was about twelve months old and it reminds me of the role I believe I have as a mother. It’s my job to love my girls and to let go of them. To provide a safe haven that they can always count on and return to. I know that my love for them is always going to be more of my focus than their love for me will be for them. They are, and should be, busy going after life. Experiencing, epic failing, learning and adjusting. Having fun. Loving.

Loving her teaches her she’s worthy of love

I’ve listed my values and beliefs concerning my parenting on the MotherOfLions webpage; https://motheroflions.com/aboutcaution/ One of them states that “Children are born perfect and deserve love for who they are”. Children come to us perfect, innocent, present, joyful and it’s our job not to mess them up, not to dim their light.

As a parent I have an enormous opportunity to influence this new little human. By giving her my full attention, when she needs it, I teach her how worthy she is. When I express joy and pleasure for spending time with her I show how she has the influence to affect others positively. By me actively searching her out and asking for her company she feels she’s important.

The more I love her for just being her the more she opens up to me. I try to make it a habit to look into her eyes every morning and every night and tell her “I love you”. Sometimes she’s in a tired morning pre-teen kind of mood or in a busy don’t interrupt me kind of mood and just brushes it off. I believe it still seeps in. And sometimes she looks me right back in my eyes and tells me “I love you too mom”. You know.. with that presence and open honesty that completely floors me.

Your role as her parent is important

You can usually tell if a person was loved by her parents, when she was little, by how she shows up in the world. If you can provide a safe home where she feels loved and that she belongs you’ll have given her the baseline truth that she’s worthy of those feelings. She will expect it from life and what she looks for she will find. If she stays open and curious and keep expecting good things to come her way she’ll have an attitude towards people that is both disarming and magnetic.

But her understanding of the power of self love is more important

There is a video on Youtube called “Jessica’s Daily Affirmation”.  It shows a girl, approx. 5 years old, standing in front of her mirror stating everything she’s happy for and everything she likes. She likes her elephant and her dad (at least twice 🙂 ) and her sister and her hair and her pajamas 😀

I wish I could have given my daughters that idea when they were even younger and not already starting to care too much about what people think. I asked my daughter the other day if she’d ever stood in front of the mirror and told herself that she loves herself. She sort of balked at the idea. “No, that would feel a bit like bragging”. I’ve clearly got some work to do!

My plan is to keep depositing love into her emotional bank account (ref. Steven Covey) but also to try to figure out a way to explain to her, in a way that a 9-year old can relate to, how important it is to love oneself.

When she fills her own cup first she will have a continuous overflow of love to keep pouring on to others. If she loves herself she will treat others with even more compassion. If she doesn’t focus on loving herself first there won’t be enough of her for the rest of us – a very selfish way to handle her life 😉

My daughter is a complete love bug so my guess is those arguments will get her to at least consider practicing more self love.

Walk your talk – showing what self love looks like

Now read this post one more time – this time exchange all places that refer to a daughter with a reference to yourself. If you cannot show her what true self love looks like no amount of teaching or preaching will do it for her. You must do the work of looking inwards and finding what, if anything, is stopping you from loving yourself. Be courageous for yourself and your children and start a practice of looking yourself in the eyes, most easily done I a mirror ( 😉 ), morning and night and tell yourself that you love you.

If you want to take it to master class level then goolge “Mirror exercise” by Lisa Nichols. It’s a simple but very powerful exercise that feels SO WEIRD the first couple of times you do it. I highly recommend it 😀