Dear all,
Last week we began this journey by exploring how we can become disconnected from the Sacred Path of Self Love. How our most sacred and precious gifts of empathy, intuition, and sensitivity can become lost in the shadow sides of over-responsibility, boundary loss, and service as sacrifice. How this can become a set pattern before we even are aware of what is happening, and how we can get stuck in roles that do not serve us before we even recognize we have a choice.
How the brave and courageous step towards prioritize ourselves can change everything.
Now we will begin to explore what the Sacred Path of Self Love is, and what that can look like.
***
I shared the story of part of my legacy to begin to bring forward why the Sacred Path of Self Love is so important, especially for those of us who feel deeply and care so much.
Self Love is a path of healing from the messaging that you only exist to be in service to others.
Self Love is a path of discovering that you, just by being you, are worthy. That your time here on this Earth matters. That what you have blossoming within you, just by being who you are, is enough.
Self Love is a path of learning that your gifts of empathy, sensitivity, and intuition are sacred. That these gifts deserve protection, boundaries, nourishment, and care. Just like you.
Self Love is a path of living into the belief that you can have boundaries and choice around how you connect to others on every level – including how much of your emotional, energetic, and psychic space you offer to them. It is learning where those boundaries are, how to embody them, and how to say no. It is a practice of letting everything you offer nourish yourself first, before you even imagine giving it to others. And it is having choice around to whom, how, and when you give of your gifts – so the experience is always beneficial and consensual.
Self Love is realizing that you do not owe your gift of empathy to anyone, at any time. That you can choose when and how to feel empathy vs. compassion with discernment, boundaries, and clarity – and to uphold your needs around that.
The Sacred Path of Self Love is as individual, as it is cultural. The unique strengths, gifts, and resiliencies of your healed Ancestors (known and unknown, of blood relation and of kinship connection) travel at your side and at your back on your path. Your unique strengths, gifts, and resiliencies travel within you on your path. Any beings you connect with that are larger than this life (Spirits, Guides, the Universe) hold space for you above and below on your path. And your true intuition, your gut knowing, your most aligned self calls you forward on your path.
By taking the brave and courageous step to walk this path you heal the lives of yourself and others, just by being you.
Self Love is a way of being in the world that must be patiently cultivated. Over years, decades, generations. It is a whole forest growing from one seed. One seed that prioritized its own need for sun, rain, soil, and love so that it could live into all that it was meant to be. And the forest grew from there.
Self Love is not a luxury. It is a necessity. And it is world-changing.
***
Next week we will begin to put this into practice. Until then, dear reader, I wish you much self-compassion, hope, and joyful possibility on your path.
In Healing,
Phoenix