Love, Cheri

Nobody ever taught me how to love myself. As I was growing up (unfortunately, in a Christian cult), what I was taught about love was that it is entirely conditional.

• Do what I am told, behave the way I am told to behave, believe what I am told to believe and do it without questioning and PERFECTLY, and then there will be love (which I still do not deserve) in return.

Conditional Love Messages

Many of us received these kinds of messages:

• Be a “good” little child and you will be loved. Be “bad” and you will not.
• Do well in school and you receive praise (love), do poorly in school and you are punished and shamed (not love).
• Be the kind of girl your parents want you to be and you are praised (love), be the kind of girl your parents deem unfit and you are shamed (not love).
• Perform well in sports and you are cheered (love), perform less than top-notch in sports and you are criticized (not love).

Internalizing Conditional Love

The message I walked away with as an adult is that love is absolutely conditional. I internalized that message and so, for most of my life I have been unable to love myself unless I am perfect.

• Unless I am the perfect mother, wife, friend, worker, writer, mentor, teacher, artist—unless what I do and say and produce is perfect, then I do not deserve love. Not from myself. Not from anyone.

The Toxicity of Perfectionism

This perfectionism is toxic. It pushes us to constantly compare ourselves to others. It pushes us to try harder and harder to achieve it, despite the fact that it’s an impossible goal.

• This toxic perfectionism (and other abuse) has caused me to have chronic anxiety (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among other disorders) and in 2020 I became so sick with it that I collapsed and spent five days recovering in the hospital. (I had been unable to eat or sleep for more time than I can measure and I was in a state of utter break-down.)

Discovering the Missing Piece

When I emerged, I began a quest to find out what was driving my conditions. There were the abuses, of course, but there was more. There was a fundamental missing piece.

• I didn’t love myself.
• I had absorbed all the messages I received as a child and in my young adulthood and my inner monologue, my head, and my heart were all treating me exactly the same way as my abusers.

Self-Criticism

• Forget to call or text a friend back? I’m worthless.
• Make a mistake at work? I’m un-redeemably stupid.
• Didn’t meet the needs of everyone around me? I’m a failure.
• Not the most entertaining person in the room? Not deserving of being.

Each day became a test of whether or not I could ever achieve perfection, and therefore ever achieve love. And because I could not ever be perfect, because it’s not possible, then I was not ever deserving of love.

The Importance of Love

Love is the basic foundation of who we are. It is the difference between survival and death. It is what motivates us to do the most basic things we do for ourselves every day.

• This includes taking the time—making—the time to care for our mental health (which is just, you know, health) and our nervous system health. It’s just as important as drinking water, eating, or sleeping.

The Culture of Self-Neglect

We are now living in a culture that frowns upon self-care.

• We’ve become so caught up in being polarized, and filtered, and sucked into the falsehoods of social media perfectionism that we have become a society defacto self-haters—comparing ourselves to the fakery we see and believing it’s real.
• We’re being injected, and spray painted, and breaking our ribs in corsets, and working out so hard we pass out. We’re refusing food until we can see a gap between our thighs.
• We’re looking at our normal, lived-in, loved-in homes and breaking our necks and our banks trying to organize everything into a plasticine perfect that simply is not real and is not possible.
• We’re told to hustle, hustle and sleep when we are dead! We aren’t underpaid by multi-billion dollar companies, we just need a side job (or three), we’re just not working hard enough to have that perfect house, partner, kid, face, body, wardrobe.

And it’s killing us.

The Rise of Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety disorders, depression, and other “mental” health issues are on a steep rise—leading to physical symptomology and pain. We are exhausted, broke, and about to collapse.

• (Or as in my case, actually collapsing) for lack of understanding the pressure and physical pain these kinds of disorders can create, especially when I did not love myself.
• We have no space to even consider the traumas that may have led us to seeking all this perfectionism in the first place. We don’t even know we are doing this to ourselves.

The Need for Change

We need a break.
We need some calm.
We need a change.
We need to love ourselves.

Real Self-Love

This kind of love isn’t the wine-o-clock, bath bomb, you-go-girl kind of surface “cure” that we see so often in every kind of media. Rather it is a deep and abiding acceptance of all that we are.

• It is a willingness to look at ourselves with kindness, honesty, forgiveness, and the kind of grace we offer to others.
• It is the kind of love that would never speak cruelly, call us names, or put us down or tell us we are not good enough.
• It is the kind of love that holds us up when we are falling, and even more—helps us to see where we might fall before we do.

Nurturing Self-Love

This kind of love is about knowing ourselves well, in a nurturing and adoring way—not with a big ego, but with a gentle force so strong that we’d never let anyone hurt us—even ourselves.

Knowing and loving ourselves is the ultimate strength.

• It’s been the power strong enough to help me finally begin to manage crippling anxiety in the wake of deep trauma. (Along with a team of loving people who continue to help guide me to find that love and nurture it!)

Real Self-Love Looks Like:

• Making time to connect with myself.
• Doing things that bring me joy.
• Wearing comfortable clothes and shoes that do not put my body through torture.
• Gentle movement that makes me and my body happy.
• Knowing that what I see on social media is not reality.
• Eating what feels good to my body.
• Saying NO not just when I need to, but when I want to.
• Saying YES and enjoying the hell out of it.
• Being unapologetically myself.
• Resting when I need to.
• Learning to speak to myself kindly.
• Loving whomever and whatever I love, also without apology.
• Quieting the critic in my head.
• Becoming the world’s utmost expert on me.

Practical Self-Love and Self-Care

I’m not talking about abandoning your life. I’m talking about making your life work for you in whatever ways you can, where you are right now. I’m talking about real self-love and self-care. It means loving yourself in a way you never have before and supporting others in doing the same.

Starting My Journey

Things must change for us in a whole and constant way.

• Mine began with a crash and then progressed to coloring a daily mandala, and then to bright, watercolor birds which teach me about anti-perfectionism, and self-love, and joy every time my brush touches the page.
• I can’t control the watercolors. They are beautifully imperfect and this is what I am seeking for myself and others—to see the beauty in ourselves just as we are. Imperfect.

Sharing My Message

And I have realized that the next step for me in creating more self-love and meaning in my life is to take this message to others.

I’m inviting you to your very own self-love, and if any of what I have to offer here can help, well, my heart has just found its purpose.

Welcome to Love, Cheri. It’s a gentle place. I’m glad you’re here.