Love Thyself...

It sounds so cliché when you hear ‘You can’t love anyone else if you don’t love yourself’…
I am going to go out on a limb and say…
It is truth…
I will even go on to say, ‘You can’t expect love if you don’t love yourself’…
I am always getting asked by women, ‘How do you do it?’
‘Your man loves you, your kids love you, your elders love you….what is the trick?
I simply tell folks there is no magic formula and certainly no tricks…if I could sell it I surely would…
But what has helped me is a healthy dose of self-love,
I knew early on that I loved me…
I have never looked for a man to fix me…
Thank you very much but God fixed me at birth…
The same holds true for my children…
I bore them, loved them, raised and disciplined them, most importantly I let them go…
When they were old enough to go…
It is totally unnecessary for them to hang around so…
I can define myself by how close my kids are to me…
Proving they love me by how needy they are…no thank you very much…
With my friendships…
I only deal with those where I can be a friend and
Have a friend…
If you give me the impression you don’t want to be bothered…
I count it all joy and leave you alone…
To me self-love means the ability to be alone…
And not lonely…
To revel in the time when it is just you…with you…
However, knowing that your loved ones are only a breath away…
And will be there when needed or wanted…
With the knowledge that you will respond in kind…
I think of last weekend my man and I were on a trip…
He was watching a tennis match on the hotel television…
I was curled up with a good book, ‘She Gone by Kwame Dawes’ wonderful book...
For hours we didn’t utter a word…periodically we would glance at the other smiling…
Finally he said, ‘Are you hungry’…smiling I nodded yes closing my book…
Much later we went out to get a meal…
Love and Blessings…
angelia