How I Learned to Love Myself During my Spiritual Awakening

One of my favorite areas of growth during my spiritual awakening has been learning to love myself. I’ve learned about self-care and its importance. I’ve learned how to self-nurture, a concept I knew nothing of until my awakening. Comparing and contrasting me before self-care and self-nurturing, to me now, I see that they are vital to my life. They are a priority. I know now that loving myself allows me to thrive.

I’m learning how to really love myself now in my 50’s. It’s likely that there are many others like me that are learning how to love themselves. Many of us had no one in our lives that modeled that type of self-love. We didn’t know it was possible, and we certainly didn’t know how good life can be when we love ourselves.

With that in mind, I’m sharing how I learned to love myself and the things I did to foster the relationship with myself. The things that spirit led me to do and be that allowed me to develop self-love. Because it didn’t happen overnight. I prioritized my relationship with myself, and I invested in it. Much like I do in any other relationship. Relationships are relationships, even when it is with our self.

I Learned to Stop Over-Giving.

When I realized that I was giving more of my energy to others than I was to myself, I knew it had to stop. To bring more balance into my life, I had to first bring awareness to when I was over-giving to a person or situation. Then I learned to be intentional about the energy I was giving. Was it worth it for me to give the energy or did I need to pull back? Did the person need me, or did they need to figure it out for themselves? Bringing awareness and intention are what brought me out of an unhealthy practice of over-giving. I can confidently say now that I am now a recovering over-giver.

I Learned to Prioritize Myself.

Part of recovering from over-giving was a new mantra, “Me first”. Learning to prioritize myself over situations or people that didn’t deserve my energy allowed for balance to return to my life. It was uncomfortable at first, but I kept looking for ways to put my needs first. Or rather, I should say that I looked for ways I was DE-prioritizing myself and neglecting my needs. Once aware, I could make changes that helped create balance. It was a process, it took time, and now I have more balance.

I Learned to Bring Awareness to My Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Needs.

To bring balance back into my life, I had to learn what my needs were. I brought awareness to what my needs were. I learned to ask myself, “What do we need in this moment?”, or today, or any given moment. It was then that I could do or be what I needed. I would pay attention to my thoughts, pay attention to my body, and listen to my intuition. And, over time and with intention, I began to understand what my needs were. With that understanding, I could then practice the type of self-care that I needed. This was a process of getting to know myself better. Whether it is rest, exercise, meditation, nature, once we know what we need we can provide it to ourselves.

I Learned to Prioritize Self-Care.

As an over-giver, focusing on self-care was important growth for me. Instead of putting my needs last, I learned to love myself by being intentional about my self-care. This didn’t come easy. I had to practice, remember, and be reminded to focus on my own self-care. I had to be honest with myself about how I was spending my time and if it was how I wanted to spend my energy. I had to be honest with myself about how much of myself I was giving away. If we’re doing it intentionally, great, that’s part of balance. But I would catch myself slipping back out of balance and giving away too much of my energy. It was then that I would schedule more self-care time for myself. The well-being brought by self-care makes it worth prioritizing and that is loving ourselves.

I Learned to Self-Nurture.

For as little as I knew about my own self-care, I knew less about self-nurturing. I must admit that it was Spirit that guided me to self-nurture. Through our interactions, I realized that my history of neglect meant that I was starved for human touch. Spirit taught me how to hold myself when I cried during challenging phases of my awakening. Spirit taught me to touch myself in a loving way. Sometimes sexually, but mostly in a nurturing way. They taught me that I could touch myself with the intention of love and satisfy my need for touch. Think of it this way, we love to touch the people we love so why not touch and hold ourselves lovingly. And, yes, it’s awkward at first because it’s new. Keep trying. Focus on the intention and sensation and feel into the nurturing. I can be so satisfying and better than waiting for someone to nurture us. We all deserve nurturing regardless of our relationship status.

I Learned to Create a Loving Relationship with Myself.

Relationships are created. Just as we invest in our loved ones, we must invest in ourselves. I like to take myself out on little dates, for a coffee, or a walk, maybe a trip to the museum or botanic gardens. It’s about spending quality time with our self and enjoying our life. It’s about investing in ourselves and ensuring that we are being and doing the things that we love and that feed our soul. I’m grateful for this growth and for the relationship with myself that I have developed and cherish.

I Learned that Spirit Wants us to Love Ourselves as They do, Divinely.

During my awakening, Spirit sent me songs to communicate. Songs for high vibes, inspiration, general badassery, and to remind me that they are with me. One song, Keeping Your Head Up, by Birdy, was the song they’d send me when I was down and out. This was their song to remind me that I am always loved. And sometimes, they would send me this part of the lyrics, “Don’t you know your pain is mine? And I would die a thousand times to ease your mind.” When I began to see myself as a divine being having a human experience it was easier to love myself. Divine beings deserve love and so do we. I still cry every time I hear that song and feel that love.

Try these things for yourself. Feel into what you need more of, and bring awareness to how you can support that in your life. Over time and with intention, you will find more of what you seek. You can create a life that better suits your needs. You can learn to love yourself. 

As with all things, self-love is about balance. It’s not always a perfect balance, life happens. There will be times when we are caring for others and times when our jobs demand more from us. The intention is to balance the energy over time and in a way that allows us to feel loved. We must learn to love ourselves. And it’s not so that we can love another, as is sometimes said. It is purely to love ourselves.

Life is too short to wait for someone to love us. We must learn to love ourselves and love ourselves WELL. We deserve love regardless of our current situation, or our current relationship status. We deserve love simply because we exist.

Today’s image was created in Canva.

I’m grateful you’re here. I love you.

Be well,

Nikki