The Road to Self-Love

Self-love isn’t at Sephora, or Amazon or even Netflix. It’s not a bath on a Wednesday night or a sleepin on Sunday morning. Self-love is a complicated, nuanced and delicate feeling that sits within each of us but more than that, is a choice we must make with ourselves each and every day; accept who you are, rather than mourn what you’re not.

As an entrepreneur, I spend a lot of time in a lot of rooms with people who are ‘somebody’s.’ People who have started a business or invented a product or raised a lot of capital. In those moments, it’s easy, in fact it’s routine, for comparison, insecurity and negativity to seep in. For me to have a moment where I think: who am I if I am not this? For every moment of doubt, there have been hours, days and years of pain in return. Days where I starved myself to look thin. Days where I worried about what I would be when I grew up. Years asking if love would come, but I never heard anything until I started using my voice to challenge the one inside my head.

It started small, a few positive affirmations, it grew into hard lessons and short goodbyes. Before long, I realised that I was always someone that mattered even if I wasn’t a ‘somebody’ the world recognised.

For far too long, we have told ourselves the same script: buy that car, get that title, lose that weight, be like her. It’s exhausting and cruel and it doesn’t lead to happiness but it also doesn’t mark the end.