Tag: positive relationships

MK’s Reflections: Love Is a Choice!

Love is a Choice.

“Love is a Choice.  Life is beautiful – don’t waste a moment of it.”  Mrs. McInerney, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Vows We Have Made”

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeessssss.  This!

These words are foundational to my existence.  My living.  My approach to my relationship with myself, others, my wellness, and the world.

Today, Sweet Blossom, I want to share this life changing goodness with you from the pinkest depths of my heart!  I hope this share will brighten your life, enlighten you, and help you grow this goodness deeper into you and your days.

Love is a choice.

I once lived a life not loving myself.

Trauma, angry/hateful drama, stress: the trifecta of unwellness in growing up in a seriously dysfunctional home additionally challenged by a significantly mentally ill parent.

My young adult years were characterized by low self-esteem, low self-confidence, … essentially low everything.  I was easy to manipulate, take advantage of, and abuse … all for seeking love that wasn’t there … that wasn’t able to be given … that was chosen not to give.

Imagine me young.  A little pink-hearted, spritely, effervescent, openly loving little kid … all I wanted was friends.  People to like and love me.

You would think that kind of inherent happy spirit would attract good people to me to love and like me.  Instead, it was more like I was the light, and the darkness flocked to me to feel my brightness, but instead drained me of it.

By the time I was an adult, I was wary.  Cautious.  Damaged.  Cynical.  Sarcastic.  I’d built a protective wall around me so high, no one would ever get over it.  No one would ever hurt me again.

The thing is, when you build a wall that high, it blocks out the light.  The chance at love.  The chance at growing beyond your own boundaries.  You’re trapped inside a protective, self-limiting vessel of your own making.

In reflection, the way I overcame this …

I’d grow to the limits of my wall, and with that new confidence, that new self-goodness, I would chip away at my own wall … allowing new light in … allowing for new growth.

Bit by bit, day by day, year by year, I grew.  My confidence.  My self-esteem.  My understanding of who I am … what I need … what brightens my lights and what dims it.  I learned what I liked about myself and what I needed to grow.  I learned to love myself.

I learned that for all the years that people hurt me, it had a lot to do with my inability to protect myself by not having the internal strength, will, skill, and self-care toolkit to love myself, respect myself, and care for myself.

Lemme see if I can explain this … It wasn’t that all the people in my life were malicious, horrid people spending their days trying to figure out how to destroy me.  No.  I learned that these people suffered with their own insecurities.  Their own self-doubts.  Their own feelings of self-negativity.

And the secret trick … the essential life lesson revealed:  You cannot give that which you do not have.

You cannot give that which you do not have.

Meaning, you can’t give love to others, when you don’t love yourself first.  Not fully, not with self-empowered/self-knowing authenticity.  It’s like wispy cloud love instead of sunny, warm, fluffy, cotton-ball, guess-the-shape kind of cloud love.

Likewise, if you surround yourself with people who don’t love themselves … guess what they can’t give you …

Yep.  You’ll be getting wispy cloud love, if any.

But here’s the thing.

Love is a choice.

We can choose love.

Sure.  It’s not always easy.  It took me YEARS to find my way to myself.

It. Was. So. Worth. It.

And it’s not like my days leading up to where I am now were filled with darkness.  No.  In fact, the more I realized I was important to myself.  The more I realized I was worthy of my time, love, kindness, patience … The more I realized I wanted happiness, goodness, and love in my life … the more I grew in.

So each and every day just got brighter and brighter!

Choose you.  Choose love.  You are worth it!

Choose you.

Choose love.

Choose to surround yourself with people who love themselves, so they can share their love with you and love you back.  (Or at least choose people who are learning to love themselves … aka … on a similar path and growing love into their lives.).

Love is a choice.

And the truth is … You are precious!  There is something so uniquely precious about you, that only you can bring this light into the world!

And I promise you, WE NEED YOU!

We need our beautiful, bright light shining in the world, making positive difference.

We need to combine all of our uniquenesses and all of our differing bright lights to create a tremendously thriving, complementary, beautiful rainbow of light, love, and life.

Love is a choice.  Life is beautiful – don’t waste a moment.

Love is a choice.

Life is beautiful – don’t waste a moment.

Growing yourself toward the light to live brightly in it … never a moment wasted … with every day getting brighter and brighter, filled with more and more love.  For yourself.  And to share.

Loving You!

Thank you Sweet Beautiful Blossom for sharing your time with me!  For growing love into your life!  For being the bright light only you can be!  For making our world a more delightful, loving, happy place to be!

Hugging you so big, and SO PINK!