Fall In Love With Yourself

One of the best things I ever did was fall in love with myself.

I spent most of my early 20’s watching all my friends pair off and get married and start families. I wrestled with jealousy but held out hope that my time would come soon enough. As I watched both of my younger brothers fall in love and marry, I began to have this little voice in my head asking if it was ever going to happen for me. This question made me so sad. I had always imagined my life as a wife and mother, what would happen to me if that never happened?

In my late 20’s I moved in with my brother Luke, his wife, and their 1 year old son. As the years went by and they had two more sons, I began to see that in reality I am not alone, I am part of a family. It might look different than I always thought it would be, but I was not missing out on being part of a team raising kids. All three of my nephews called me and my sister-in-law ‘mom’ the first few years of their life until they figured out I was their aunt. The three of us adults raised the three of those boys as a team, in tandem. I knew I wasn’t their parent and that I made no decisions about how they were raised, but the love those boys gave (and still give) is more than I would have ever imagined I could receive. They also stretched my heart out further than I knew it could go, each one extending my capacity of how much love I could hold. They filled a longing in my heart and helped me ease into the thought that maybe I would never meet someone and have children of my own.

In my early 30’s I decided maybe I was too laid back in my approach to finding someone. As my sister-in-law once said to me, did I really think a man would just walk through the door as I watched Grey’s Anatomy in my pajamas while eating popcorn? Not likely. At this point online dating was much more socially acceptable, so I decided to sign up. It did not go as expected. Trying to meet someone authentic and genuine online felt like an impossible task. It did the opposite of what I thought it would, instead of giving me renewed hope, it only brought disappointment, discouragement, and questions of myself worth. I took the eHarmony quiz, and less than 1% of their members worldwide were a match for me. This was the site that touted itself as having someone for everyone!

At some point I figured it was easier to just give in to singleness. Try as I might, hope kept rising up in me though. By my mid-30’s, I realized that in order to help myself, I needed to grieve the dream of marriage and kids. So I did. I grieved this dream for a couple of years, and it led me to a place I did not expect.

I’m not sure how it happened exactly, but at some point in my late 30’s I realized that I am the person who will be with me until I die. That thought radicalized how I thought about myself. Suddenly I realized I was the one who could best take care of me. I think on some level, we all want to be cared for, looked out for, and taken care of. I do have friends and family who do this for me, but on the day-to-day level, it was myself who was doing this. Somehow this freed my mind and instead of waiting around for my life to begin, I started living it. I hadn’t realized before that I was waiting to do certain things until I had a partner. But that was unnecessary, I could do those things right now.

Now that I’m in my 40’s, this has been cemented in me. I am flawed, I carry scars, I have endured battles of life, but I am also resilient, strong, valued, and worthy. These were not easy things to learn, and I remind myself of them daily. Realizing that one of the greatest love stories of my life is falling in love with myself can feel a big corny at times, but it’s also so empowering. Instead of wasting my time beating myself up over “bad” qualities or habits, I remind myself that I deserve better than that and that helps me change instead of spending months or years running in the same circles. The older I get the more I love who I am, and that makes me excited for the years to come.

I love my loudness, my big hair, my gap teeth, my compassionate heart, my creative mind, the way I sing loud and passionate until I see another person out the window then I giggle quietly to myself, the way I find myself dancing from the living room to the kitchen, the way I care for others, the way I am mothering in my own way, all the ways I bring bright colors into the lives of those around me, I love how just writing this all out makes my heart well up with love for myself all over again and makes me laugh at how silly it seems to declare your love for yourself publicly but knowing I’ll do it anyways.

In falling in love with myself, I have learned to have grace for myself. And that is life changing. I dare you to fall in love with yourself. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the process is beautiful and lifegiving, and it will be one of the best things you’ve ever done.

All of this doesn’t mean I no longer have hope that I could meet someone. But it does change how I look at it. I’m not on any dating sites, I no longer ask friends if they know someone they could set me up with, I no longer feel a stab of jealousy when I’m with my married friends and their kids. Instead, I am simply living my life and loving all the people in it, and if someone shows up to run along with me, so be it. But if not, that’s fine too. Maybe I’ll be one of those people who get married for the first time at 82, or maybe I’ll find someone when I’m 58 and we’ll foster and love a bunch of kids, or maybe I’ll be married a year from now, or maybe I’ll end up old and living with one of my nephews and his wife and kids. The point is, I will live life and it will be full of beautiful twists and turns, and I will be right there with myself the whole time.