Love - where I begin
At the beginning of the pandemic, my relationship to love was fraught. I loved other people and believed other people loved me, but I couldn’t love myself. At the time, I was also editing my memoir manuscript. One of the revelations in the story, which takes place ten years before the pandemic, is coming to love myself. (Here’s a peek at the memoir - this short piece, “Blood,” is in it.) I had a serious case of imposter syndrome, which was exacerbated by how inconsequential my life felt in the present moment.
I walked the trail by my house, a ribbon of natural area bounded by I-5 to the west, a busy road to the east, car dealerships on the north, and a business park on the south. The trail had a creek, birds, rabbits, big trees, flowers, nests, and more. On a dead branch in the top of a tree by the trail, a hummingbird often perched. Seeing this tiny creature would scatter my gloom.
I listened to astrology podcasts and videos. I Zoomed with my therapist. I talked to friends on the phone. I joined Hunger Hope and Healing.
Mantra - practice a new talk track
In Hunger Hope and Healing, I learned to change my internal talk track. I didn’t believe the positive things I told myself, but I practiced. As part of the program, I developed a mantra for myself:
“In the way I love and admire you as you are, I love and admire me as I am.”
I could love others, and it helped me to access the feeling for myself when I put myself in the space of loving another. My mantra partner sent my mantra to me every day. And every day, I sent her mantra to her:
“I innately know what is best for me in my body, I choose embodiment over belonging.”
Sometimes I would sit for five minutes with one hand on my belly and one hand on my heart and repeat my mantra, pouring love on myself.
Warrior of love
When Mars moved into Aries in late June 2020, I took the astrological recommendation to heart of being a warrior of love. My actions weren’t much different from what I’d been doing with my mantra – pouring love on myself and sending it out to others and the world. Around this same time, I began meeting virtually once a week with another artist in my Hunger Hope and Healing cohort. I made postcards. I sent love in the mail. Mars stayed in Aries until January 6, 2021 when it moved into Taurus at 5:26 pm Eastern.
I’ve heard it takes seven weeks to develop a habit.
Opening my heart to me
Sometime in the fall of 2020, the positive messages, the steeping in love, the therapy, the walking, the time in nature, the conversations with friends, the astrology, the creativity…I finally believed that I loved and admired myself as I was…I could actually feel it.
I still have times I feel down on myself. But I have mantras. I can intervene when I notice the negative talk and redirect with a mantra. This spring I made a new one that feels current with opening my heart to me:
“I am grateful for my body as it is, that it carries me to beauty in every moment of my life.”