“Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let’s normalise Self Love. Let’s normalise healing. Not only are you worthy of the love you did not recieve as a child, but you are capable of so much more in terms of living your best life.
We all grew up not knowing what self love was. Honestly, we grew up not knowing what LOVE was to begin with. We accepted the fairy tale versions of love as definitions of real love. We accepted our dysfunctional setups as normal love. If that meant living in emotionally and physically abusive households, we thought that was normal. Not anyone’s fault, it was all we knew.
It was our normal.
Only as adults who suffer from pains and traumas, do we realize that past was not normal. It was a dysfunctional setup, that fractured our emotional growth.
Unlearning dysfunction and learning what it meant to love myself and others was difficult for me, as I am sure it is for you too. I lived decades of my life accepting mild attention as love. But, as I learned to love myself and truly understood the meaning of love, healing from old wounds and dysfunctional love became easier.
Mind you, there was a lot, a lot of back tracking. A lot of slipping into old bad habits that I thought were normal and comfortable. Unfortunately our mind loves old comforts, even if they are dysfunctional or detrimental to us. That is why identifying those old comforts and re-labeling them as dysfunction is imperative.
Deciding to start healing from my past trauma, pain, and heartache changed my life for the better.
It wasn’t easy at first. And there are still days that are hard to push through—but I have learned so much about choosing joy and healing vs. staying stuck in unhealthy cycles and patterns.
Today, as we normalize self love, as we normalize healing from dysfunction remember this:
- Positive change is possible and important for healing.
- Shedding old comforts is bound to happen as you live a self loving life.
- Trust yourself enough to let go of all that does not serve your highest good.
- Creating the life you want takes action. Simply reading or hearing how is not enough to create the life of your dreams. Doing is key.
- Choosing to love yourself is a daily practice. A practice in healing from past dysfunction.
Affirm to yourself daily:
I AM worthy of healthy loving relationships even though I grew up in a toxic environment.
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Positive Provocations 
This is presented soo amazingly Zeena, must read one it is to resonate with your beautiful thoughts. One must learn on how to be functional in self and eternal love. Loved it so much. Thanks for sharing ❤
I agree with you Suma. We all need to self regulate and truly understand what healthy love looks and feels like. I’m so happy you liked it. Thank you for reading and sharing your beautiful thoughts ❤ ❤ ❤
Thank you for sharing your story . Self love is so important as is knowing wo are worthy and enough
Waking up each morning and saying I love you and feeling it 💜💜💜
I love that habit of waking up each day and saying “I Love you”. Thank you for sharing it here Suzie ❤
I had to “unlearn” what love was also. From my childhood, I had a very unhealthy idea of what it was, and replicated that in my marriage. I have learned to love myself but have not ventured into a relationship since I have. I think it’s enough for me for now!
Debbie, I can truly imagine carrying old unhealthy patterns into all our relationships. I did exactly that! But the fact that you are in a good space now, and feel happy, that is enough. When you are ready you are ready ❤
It’s not an easy task to undo our past experiences of what real love looks like Zeenat… and I suspect I stumbled upon it rather than discovering it. Or perhaps experiences eventually led me there. With that said it still seems like a work in progress as I grow in awareness.
Elle, I think you are lucky that you stumbled upon healthy love the way you did. You are right, its very hard to break old patterns. But its worth it in the long run. We are all works in progress 🙂 ❤
Powerful piece, Zeenat. I love how you emphasize that “doing is key” and this is a process that needs to be engaged daily. I so agree! Life can be so much better when we tackle our dysfunction stuff.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here Sandra! And so happy this piece resonated with you. Our dysfunctions need to be healed ❤
I believe we also have the right to remove toxic family members or partners from our lives, either temporarily or permanently, depending on how able they are to change. Self love is the only way to heal.. its tough when dysfunction is all you’ve ever known but by changing the energy we give out to others, we can begin to attract those who are not so dysfunctional. Going around in circles is likely, until we break the cycle by being more selective about who and what we allow in our lives, and recognising that the same characters are appearing again and again..well, that awareness is the key to setting us free. Great to read your post, I understand where you are coming from ❤