Passionate Self Love
by Joanna Albrecht

I am in an amazingly passionate and loving relationship… with myself.  It wasn’t always this way…it has been an on again off again on again relationship.  When I was growing up I thought that my life purpose was to find a partner and please them. If I did this I was fulfilling my destiny. But throughout all of my relationships, I never had a sense of peace. I was always worried, wondering if love would end…and eventually it always did.

I had been focused outside of myself for so long.  Pouring love on men who didn’t appreciate me, who didn’t see me for the amazing person I was and there was a part of me that had to watch as time and time again I would spend my energy loving others only to deny love for myself that I so deeply needed.  I had been through many “lesson relationships” where I had given my power away to others. After a particularly bad breakup, I went into my heart to ask why I gave my power away.  I realized that the thought of being responsible for my own power was overwhelming.  Like Marianne Williamson writes…”Our biggest fear is not that we are inadequate; our biggest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”  I had seen how my intensions manifested things in the world and somewhere inside of myself I thought I was not worthy to wield this power. I knew that I could affect things by my thoughts and through my will and I couldn’t always be sure I was coming from the most clear and loving place. I wanted my power to be used for the highest good…but I knew I wasn’t quite clear enough to know what that was. Who am I, what is my purpose? Am I a good person? Why do I feel so bad about myself? Why am I so hard on myself? What did I do to feel this awful?  And again, Marianne’s words rang true for me. ” It’s not that you feel like you did anything bad, you just feel like you are bad. Period.”

One day I began putting together a list of qualities I wanted my perfect partner to have and what I would like this partner to do for me. I want them to be beautiful, spiritual, intelligent, well read, like nature, have a good job, like to travel, like the music I like, good kisser, etc.  I wanted to be courted, to receive flowers and get taken dancing, to go for long walks and talk about spirit and the meaning of life, watch sunsets together…

I looked at my list one day and it occurred to me, that in order to attract this into my life I need to be these things too. I needed to become the mirror of the person I wanted to attract. I decided to give myself all of the things that I was waiting to get from another person. I took myself on dates, I bought myself flowers, every Friday I would go to this local Irish pub and order a Veggie burger and pear cider to take myself out on a date, I wrote myself poetry and love songs. I even made up dances and danced for myself.  During the day I would tell myself, “I love you” “You are my beautiful girl” “You are doing a good job” “Everything is going to be OK”

Something inside of me started to shift.

My body which was always tense, stressed and guarded, started to relax and open up.  I became aware of the love that was all around me and for the first time I realized I deserved this love too!

Ponta, an amazing Spiritual healer and close friend of mine gave me the book, “The Prospering Power of Love”  by Catherine Ponder and I started saying affirmations… “I am Divine Love.” “Unconditional Love is flowing to me and through me Now.”  After a few weeks I started to radiate Love and a Light that was almost tangible. The harsh thoughts I had about myself started to fade and I began to fall in Love with not only myself, but everyone and everything around me.  Everywhere I went I saw love. I saw Love in the trees. I saw Love on the sidewalk. I saw Love in the people’s eyes all around me. It seems that the Love I was looking for was within me the whole time. The key was to love myself so fully and completely that I couldn’t help but love all those around me. It was just a natural side affect.  At the beginning it was difficult. I would cry because somewhere inside I felt like a hurt child who hadn’t been talked to or given love in so many years. I had been ignoring her and if I did speak to her I said so many negative things, about her body about every mistake she made. I was harsher on her than I was with anyone else in my life.  She needed a break and needed to be sure that I was truly going to be loving and gentle with her from now on. I had to regain her trust with gentle words and kindness. I had to remember the times that I spent alone growing up. How I would take walks in the fields by my house with just my tape recorder, and make up songs and do nature documentaries about the plants and trees. I remembered how I used to make up stories to entertain myself. Because my mother and I moved a lot when I was little I was the only constant friend that I had, so I became my true best friend.  As I remembered this love I had for myself, I slowly started to relax and opened up and my gifts and wisdom started coming up from within.  Before I found this love, I could be in a room of people, getting hugged and loved up, but I would still feel alone. I had gotten so mad at others for not giving me enough love, but now that I give myself what I need, I truly feel taken care of and absolutely safe and truly Loved by myself and everyone around me.

Healers take care of so many people and we sometimes forget that we are one of those people that need to be taken care of. As we take the time to fall in love with ourselves we become overflowing with love, feel safe enough to open fully and as we do we start to expand our capacity for love. We open like a flower to the sun and as we do everyone starts to shine, emanating this frequency of unconditional love and when people are around us they can’t help but feel it to. When we love ourselves fully and completely without conditions it gives others the opportunity to love themselves without conditions. We simply hold the space of love in our own being and it radiates out. We don’t need to do anything other than be present for healing to occur for the other person. Their frequency rises by just being in our presence.  When our minds are peace filled and loving within, we can have loving thoughts for others in our outside world. When we are loving to ourselves it gives people the  permission to be loving to themselves.  And eventually they realize that the love they were looking for was inside of themselves the whole time.