Self Love

Dear Seekers,

Why is self-love so hard? The first reason is that even though self-love resides in us, it is impacted by many things outside of us. How at home we feel in ourselves, says less about us, and more about how others have treated us and if we've felt accepted for who we are. We do not live in a culture that encourages self-love because if we did actually like ourselves, we'd stop buying a ton of shit we don't need to "fix" ourselves (and capitalism as we know it would begin to crumble). The second reason is that to love ourselves is to know ourselves--our feelings, desires, motives, wounds, and even the parts we don't like. We aren't very good at getting to know the part of others we don't like--often responding to these parts by turning away, fighting them, and trying to make them into something we need them to be to feel less uncomfortable--let alone face and get acquainted with these things within us.