There are times that my heart just breaks with sadness for the me that I was for so much of the first half of my life. Often I feel that same intense, heart-hurting sadness while witnessing the struggles of many of the dear people with whom I’ve worked over the almost 38 years that I’ve been a therapist.
The level of self-loathing, self-denigration and excoriating self-criticism with which I and so many of us have lived (or still live) is monumental. Staggering in both its overt and its more obscured versions. It is absolutely extraordinary: the depth and breadth of what we suffer in our anguished yearning to be seen as—and to see ourselves as—worthy and valuable, lovable beings
This experience profoundly echoed my daily experience with my cold, distant, critical and dismissive mother. With her, too, I never seemed to get anything "right." Nothing I ever did seemed to bring any warmth, tenderness, appreciation or approval from her. I was filled with self-loathing and despair. Early on, my little heart began believing that, if only I could figure out how to be "better," different, "a gooder girl, " less needy, more something-other-than-I-was, then my mother would magically be transformed. She would be more tender, loving, warm and comforting with me. Others, too, would see me as a valuable, worthy being.
This belief led to more than thirty years of striving at the Herculean task of trying to be exceptional and special and perfect at everything to which I put mind or hand. I seemed endlessly compelled to push and bend and twist and re-form myself to fit the images of what I imagined she and others would hold as acceptable, valuable. A desperate, ceaseless search for the recognition, acknowledgement and approval that I so sorely missed. The outside recognition and approval that I believed would help me come to love and value myself.
None of this ever worked. My mother never was transformed. No amount of "recognition" for my specialness made me feel more worthy, valuable or lovable.
Then, not long after my 32nd birthday, some deep wordless knowing within myself began urging me to let go of this way of being me in the world. (See Pirouettes for more about this.) I felt pushed from within to give up the repeated, futile attempts to achieve the "perfection," the outside recognition and outside acknowledgement that I had mistakenly believed could heal me from my recurrent, intense self-criticism and self-loathing. I felt pushed to leave behind all the trappings of my compulsively over-achieving lifestyle, the geography in which I’d lived that lifestyle and, with just a few exceptions, the relationships that had been part of that life style.
In the ongoing (if sporadic) journal I kept during that first year of travel and transitioning, the mistaken beliefs about "doing" leading to feelings of worthiness fall away. In their place, a new layer emerges into consciousness. In the journal there is a long poem that speaks of the achingly profound yearning for someone who might love me into loving myself. In that poem, "I Want a Momma," there is a poignant call for someone to "love me to pieces, just how I am…till I have no choice but…to revel in the joys of being me."
And there WERE, indeed, many people that I met in the early years of my "new life" who responded lavishly with delight and appreciation for the person I was in the moment. None of them knew anything about "who I’d been" in my over-achieving, pirouetting former life. Their valuing of me had only to do with the "just-me" ness of me, the one without any "credentials of value" earned by doings. Yet, none of this made for any significant shift in the intensity of my recurrent self-loathing. It did little either to transform my self-criticism, or to nurture me into loving myself.
There was an awful irony that I discovered in the middle of that time: When someone actually does show incredible delight and appreciation for this self that we hate, that person often gets immediately devalued in our eyes. We see them as stupid, deranged, utterly lacking in judgment or, at the very least, quite misguided and not seeing truly. We are totally convinced that only a very poor judge of character/value could love and accept someone like us just the way we "are"—miserably inadequate, fatally flawed creatures that we see ourselves to be.
Sometimes, we prove unsuccessful in discrediting the judgment of the other who holds positive visions of our loathed selves. In these times, the unimpeachable other’s good opinion of us can often further exaggerate the intensity of our self-hatred. Their good opinion can contribute to our coming to feel like we are imposters, poseurs, bogus. Then, we’re likely to rip into ourselves for "pulling the wool over" everyone’s eyes. We "know" that if we would stop inadvertently bamboozling them, they would really "see" who we are behind our reprehensible subterfuge. Then, they would surely agree with our terrible opinion of ourselves.
The child, the young woman and the thirty- early forty-something woman of me were all dreadfully tangled up in this terrible "catch-22." Starved for and seeking positive, loving reflections, I longed for the acceptance from other(s) that I believed would free me to unconditionally embrace all of myself. Yet, the more I would be surrounded by such reflections, the more antsy, uncomfortable and loathing of myself I would become.
Despite this baffling experience with loving reflection, I was absolutely dedicated to being as sensitive, perceptive, caring, loving, compassionate and unconditionally accepting as I could be to the broken, self-critical, self-loathing selves of others. Relentlessly I committed myself to giving to others—generously and exquisitely—just what I felt most desperate to find for myself. Just what I continued to believe would heal my own similar brokenness, were someone to give it so lovingly to me. This belief continued despite growing experiential evidence that it was clearly faulty.
Through all this endless effort and confusion, I gradually began to understand that unlearning our self-hatred is very much an inside job. No amount of others’ loving, acceptance, valuing can actually dismantle our self-loathing. Until and unless we have developed at least a kernel of self-acceptance, their good energy has no opening through which to enter into us.
There is no question that being surrounded by a loving, accepting environment is more supportive to our growing into self-love than being surrounded by a demoralizing, critical, denigrating environment. (Even as the loving environment brings some real challenges with it.) Yet, the job of actually transforming the self-hatred into self-love is something only we, ourselves, can do—from the inside out.
The transformation from self-loathing into loving myself fully, compassionately and unconditionally began with my discovering the little one(s) inside of me. (See The Little Ones Story for more about this part of the journey.) When I met this little extraordinary creature in a guided fantasy, I couldn’t help but feel utterly beguiled by her being. She was absolutely captivating: adorable, vulnerable, lovable, outspoken and exuberant. There was no help for it: I fell instantly in love with her. She inspired an enormously fierce, ferocious protectiveness in me.
I was working with a wonderfully talented creative arts therapist at the time. She was able to give me just what I so desperately needed at that magical moment. She gave me the extraordinary gift of the permission and encouragement to give to that little one all the love, acceptance, compassion and sensitive caring I had till then only felt "allowed" to give away to others. (Never mind how ultimately useless it was to the others to whom I gave it!)
Over the more than 18 years since that incredible day when I was 44 years old, I have opened my arms and my heart to the various little selves inside of me. I’ve devoted myself utterly to hearing and tending to their separate voices, their stories, their sorrows, their needs, their frustrations, their fears, their joys and their sillinesses. My life has been a daily practice of lovingly, compassionately and fiercely protectively mothering all these little one parts of me.
Though I’d intentionally chosen never to birth or mother a physical child, I did have an extensive and well-honed repertoire of mothering skills to bring to my practice. These were the skills that I had been devoting to ministering to the broken little ones I saw in other grown-ups. My new practice was turning those skills to the re-mothering of my self. In this journey of re-mothering myself, I have literally become the very "Momma " I was yearning for in that long ago journal poem.
(Note: In me, as in most of us, these inner little ones are not fully developed "multiple personalities." They are merely the usually unattended internal parts of a complex self. Were these parts true "child multiples," though, I would actually be doing the very same practice with them.)
The tender, devoted care I keep giving to all the parts of myself has and has had an amazing and remarkable effect on my entire life. It has radically transformed every aspect of my existence: my relationship with myself, with my life, with everyone in my life, with the whole sacred circle of life.
The whole emotional vocabulary with which I talk to myself has changed. Though it has taken time and dedicated, repeated practice, I no longer have to contend with the heinous self-derogating of the "Hatchet Lady" (my formerly ferociously, devastatingly annihilating inner-critic).
These days, no one (inside or outside of me) has permission to verbally beat me up or to tell me that there’s something "wrong" with how I am. I can hear that someone (outside or inside of me) doesn’t like how I am being. I’m equally willing to hear how they find it problematic for themselves. Or, even how they wish that I were able to be different. I can listen to these kinds of feedback with sympathy and compassion. Yet, as soon as someone is suggesting that how I am is categorically not okay (rather than not-okay-for-them) the Mommy interferes so that I do not have to listen to such harmful messages.
For the most part, her unconditional loving helps me to no longer be so vulnerably subject to other people’s ideas of how I should be or act or feel or think. I now understand that their ideas about and for me are likely to reveal to me much more about who they are than about who I am. I am rarely, these days, available to be seduced by their good opinions or devastated by their bad opinions of me.
I don’t necessarily like every way I am in every moment. But, I can and do accept all the ways that I am in any moment. I’ve come to know, in a cell-deep way, that accepting where I am in any moment is the only way I have a prayer of ever moving beyond that place. (Despite the indoctrination from "conventional wisdom" that teaches us to abhor and repudiate whatever in ourselves we would like to change!) The Mommy inside is loving and patient with my stucknesses for as long as they last. This gives me a gentle spaciousness in which to grow myself.
As we each work to develop and deepen the practice of become unconditionally loving mothers to ourselves we are part of a revolution in consciousness. We are freeing ourselves from the countless undermining torments that our pasts and our culture can visit upon our tender, vulnerable selves. We are becoming more solidly grounded in our own precious evolving selves. We are becoming consistently more gentle, more kind, more tender with our vulnerable and empowered selves.
The more we practice unconditionally accepting and genuinely, compassionately loving ourselves, the more fully we can bring genuine loving, hearttul compassion and unconditional acceptance to others in our lives. We become infinitely less likely to be trying to "fix" or to "improve" others "for their own benefit." We grow the capacity to be caring, spacious witnesses to rather than misguided, impatient "interferers" in the tender evolving process in all those around us.
Imagine the possibilities in bringing your unconditional loving to yourself,
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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