LUV YOSELF ♡

♡GET TO KNOW ME + A LIL BIT ABOUT MY SELF LOVE JOURNEY♡ Since I was little, my alone time has been very important to me. I liked being alone because there was no one around to judge me on what I was doing, I felt completely free when alone. As a very insecure kid, preteen and eventually teen- being judged was all I feared and it held me back until my mid-twenties. When I was depressed, I did not want to deal with working on myself and facing my inner demons. Instead I ignored the problems and masked them with lies, denial, unhealthy habits and unwarranted selfishness. Those masks commonly became a never ending cycle of not working on myself. Alone time made me have to look at myself and see the problems, but being out around people meant I was too busy to see the hole I was digging myself in. For once in my life I was more scared of what I truly thought of myself more than anyone else in the world. And I was scared to find out I hated the person I had become. I was on a mission to love myself again. Not really "again" though- while working on loving and excepting myself, I learned I never really loved myself in the first place. I felt low. I started reading books about people who came back from hitting their personal rock bottom. My favourite book since I was a teenager is The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx. I reread it every time I feel low. I learned from reading that the first step to loving yourself is respecting your health. At this time in my life I was surviving on fast food, fountain pop, chocolate and beer. I felt as gross as the food I was fuelling my body with. I started doing research on why I felt so sluggish and negative and healthy eating was always the answer. I put down the 8th slice of pizza I had that night and decided to make a change for good. Since that night I have done a complete 180 on what I eat now and it has changed my whole life; body, mind + soul. Once I started eating healthy I wanted to make my brain healthy. I worked on meditating and breathing techniques to slow my high anxiety fuelled mind. I wrote down everything I hated about myself and looked at each reason until I could accept it and agree to work on it. Some reasons took months, but constantly facing them made me want to jump that hurdle and get it out of the way. I was on a roll and after a year of working hard on my list, I crossed my last reason for hating myself off: self resentment for not working on loving myself sooner. Letting go made me free again. Free like when I was a kid making magazine collages in my bedroom alone listening to Much Dance 2004. I was that little kid again, but in an adult body that was able to make all the dreams that kid made, come to life. I started making myself get creative again, which was hard at first. When I was depressed my imagination only knew how to create false narratives about what people thought about me, not how to express my feelings through art. I had to rewire my brain and fire up that positive, creative imagination I knew I had still hidden somewhere inside. I started by watching movies that inspired me creatively: Almost Famous, Meet the Robinsons + Mary Poppins. I would rewatch those movies while drawing out interior design ideas I wanted to try. After filling a book with drawings I began to make my designs come true little by little in our home. Staying true to my heart I made sure everything I bought was secondhand, allowing me to buy super unique furniture and making my home completely my own design. I was on a high, creatively speaking, and I started to really come into my own, without any fear of judgement for the first time in my life. I realized the only opinion that truly matters is my own and that felt powerful to finally understand. Once I was confident in putting my designs into action I needed to become confident in the skin I was in and the clothes I was putting on it. My body was my biggest source of insecurity and I just put ugly baggy clothes on to hide it. Thrifting helped me find cheap clothes that no one else had. Feeling unique made me feel like myself fully and confidently. Being myself meant wearing whatever my heart wanted but this time without judging or holding myself back for no reason. I tried on things I always wanted too, things I never would have thought looked good on me and mainly tried things I never even liked before and surprised myself completely when I liked more than my closed mind did before. Suddenly I had TOO much to wear, a problem I had never had before. The second biggest hurdle on my list of things I hated about myself was: learning to love my self not only for me but for my partner. He always made a conscious effort to make me feel beautiful, wanted and loved. But at my most depressed I shut down and became a numb lump that was hard to love. I read a quote that changed my thought process completely and I can not for the life of me figure out where I read it but it went a lil something like this;

"When your partner tells you 'you are beautiful' 'you are so smart' or 'I love every inch of you' and you deny that- you are calling them a liar. If you trust your partner, they would never lie to you. Rather you are lying to yourself and that is just blatant disrespect."

That quote haunted me in the worst way. It made me dissect why I did not believe him when he would tell me those things and it always came back to not loving myself enough to believe that. Knowing loving myself would help our relationship I made it top priority on my list. I started changing my attitude towards our relationship and made myself and only me responsible for the way I felt. I taught myself to stop taking things he did personally and just focused on me. We stopped arguing and became a team. We looked out for ourselves but with our partner in mind, it was our perfect balance. Accountability was my biggest obstacle to overcome in our relationship but seeing how happy he was to see me truly happy made being accountable for my own thoughts much easier to work on. I like to say I did all this for me but deep down it was for him. He deserves the best partner in the world and I am determined to be that partner. This process of changing my body, mind + soul has taken me years and will be something that I work on my whole life. I mean who wants to stop becoming a better version of themselves?? There is always room to grow and I can not wait to see where 2020 takes me. I know this upcoming year is going to be my most personally successful year yet and that is solely based on how excited and hyped i am to crush allllllll of my goals + hopefully more. If you are ever struggling to find a way out of depression, unhealthy habits/relationships or just need help starting your own self love journey do not hesitate to message me. I am always happy to chat + and work out anything with you ♡ peace + luv kay x