Ever since I was a teenager, I was fascinated by the concept of self-love. I I don’t think I understood it, and I definitely didn’t apply it, but I loved watching makeover shows and chick-flicks. I was a total sucker for that moment in Hairspray when Tracy Turnblatt realized that she was beautiful, and as a result, Zac Efron fell madly in love with her. While my love for Zac Efron has actually grown exponentially instead of decreasing, my exploration of love outside of the movies has grown as well.
For those of you that don’t know, I have spent the past year interviewing 100 New Yorkers about their love lives and creating a web series based on the stories and people I meet. It’s amazing how much I have learned about love from everyone so far, but there has been one thing that always stands out to me. A lot of people don’t love and value themselves enough! I have heard so many people utter the line, “ We broke up because he/she was too good for me.” Since I am trying to learn from all of my interviews, I have spent this year focusing on self-love.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned about self-love is knowing that I’m on this earth to share the experience with other people. As I was writing this, I immediately flashed back to an experience I had a few years ago. I was at the Hippocrates Health Institute after having some chronic health issues. As you can imagine, when people have chronic health issues, it can get emotionally exhausting. Everyone I met had been back and forth between doctors, surgeries, etc, so there were days when everyone just needed to vent and cry. One day, I was with a group of people and I started crying. Now, if you know me, you know that crying is not a big deal and certainly not an infrequent experience. I’m just a cryer. However, after I started crying, there was a woman next to me that just started hugging me. Now, I’m not talking about a little pat. Here is a woman whose deathly ill husband was sitting next to her and she was giving me a full body squeeze. After the embrace, she said to me, “Honey, sometimes we all just need a good hug.” I will never forget that moment. It taught me that a huge part of self-love is letting people into your lives instead of trying to do everything by yourself. Just look at Sir Richard Branson! He always explains that he is both successful and happy because he surrounds himself with people that inspire him and share their brilliance with him.
Oh, and one more note. Thank you to Alexis Sirkin for the beautiful picture and thank you so much to my former students for being the blog models this week. It really was after working with these kids that I experienced what it means to be surrounded by an abundance of love. Seriously, they can’t keep their hands off of each other. Love you guys!
Wishing you all a good weekend, lots of self love, and allowing people into your lives to love you.
Have a Funky Friday!
I think it’s really cool that the stories that you are collecting have a “self-love” focus too because people often forget that this is important as well. So excited to see how this is shown in the series!
Also, love the shout out!!! 🙂