What we can learn from our children about self love

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but parenting has been the biggest catalyst for my own self love journey.

When Po was born, I had a horrid realization that if I didn’t heal my relationship with myself, I was going to pass down the body shame and self-loathing that had been foisted upon the women in my family (and in most families) for generations.

Suddenly there was a reason to love myself. I had a tiny human relying on me to go first. Becoming a mother was as much of a birth for me as it was for her. It was as if something essential inside me switched on; giving birth was the power surge that kicked the generator back on, and my whole life began to hum with the current ever so subtly.

The body shame and self loathing still came, but now, there was something in me that squared its shoulders, looked that shame straight in the face, and dared to say, “no.” Each time I flipped those negative thoughts around and looked for something I genuinely liked about myself, the voices inside and outside grew louder and more irascible. But that’s the funny thing about harmful thoughts: the closer you are to dissolving them, the louder & scarier they become. It’s really quite a terribly obvious tell. It’s an extinction burst— a scale model of what we’re seeing happening in America right now.

Babies aren’t born ashamed, we teach it to them by being ashamed ourselves. There’s a reason most wise teachers point to children as spiritual masters— because they are. Children are exactly themselves, no more and no less. They’re not ashamed of their bodies, their temperaments, personalities, preferences, eating habits, or anything! They fully love and accept themselves and then in turn, fully love and accept us.

I think this is the lesson of all lessons. What we can learn from our children is that only when we fully love and accept ourselves, messy humanity and all, we will be able to offer the kind of love that changes the world.

If you’d like to get back to that place of pure, innocent, wild self love, book a complimentary coaching session with me today!