Who are You Calling Sweetheart? Paying attention to the language of our inner world.
I’ve been paying attention to the language I use to communicate with myself, and I’m happy to share that I’m feeling good about it—long at last.
I will be sixty-four in September. It has taken a lot of letting go of the messages from my childhood and our society that I swallowed whole. Messages such as: I have to look perfect, be thin, be pretty, say the right things all the time, and accomplish great things in order to be acceptable—to others and to myself. To be worthy of loving kindness. To be “successful.”
This past year and a few months have held great change in my life. Times when many changes arrive at once are often our soul’s growing periods—times to learn what our spirit came into human form to learn, times of transformation.
They usually aren’t easy, to say the least.
It is surrendering to the challenges within these times that sculpts us, shifts our minds, and creates us anew.
A couple of months ago, I was making my bed and thinking about the year I was just coming out of. I was considering the ways I might have done some things differently when I heard my inner voice say:
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You were always in sync with your soul.”
Truly, I stopped. I looked around.
“Who are you calling sweetheart?”
“You,” my inner voice said.
That day, a glow filled me. A childlike joy and giddiness accompanied me as I set up my newly inhabited rental condo and adjusted to all the new circumstances of my life—including living alone for the first time in more than forty years.
I loved myself.
Without trying to.
Without effort.
I had arrived in the land of self-love, long at last.
Does that mean I am forever in the land of self-love? No. But I am there more and more often.
I have come to understand that living my soul’s journey has broken down walls between me and Love.
How does this experience and understanding help me in my work with others?
My own lived experience helps me accompany others as they listen for their own soulful knowing and begin noticing what stands between them and Love.
What happens when there is less standing between Love and us?
What happens when our inner world fills with love and no walls rise up to say:
But you aren’t this yet.
You did that stupid thing.
You have to lose weight.
You have to do something spectacular to earn your own love.
What happens when we accept all that we are?
I mean all of it.
The parts of ourselves that cause us trouble. The parts that annoy others. The parts we judge as ugly, irritating, too much, not enough, or somehow unacceptable.
For me, this means allowing my changing body and weight, my alopecia and hair loss, my verbal processing—I talk A LOT—my super-sensitive nervous system that can sometimes become reactive, and so much more.
Loving all that we are does not mean we never grow, repair, apologize, or change. It means we no longer withdraw love from ourselves while we do.
What is a part of you that you have judged as needing to change before you can be completely lovable?
Can you allow that part of yourself, right now, into the presence of Love?
Perhaps you smile and say:
Hello, Love. Today I will not build obstructions between us. I will not put my energy into searching for reasons I am unworthy of you. I do not have to earn you. And I will share you with each person, each creature, each being that connects with my life.
When we accept that we are lovable as is and allow love to inhabit us, we become channels of love within our relationships, our families, our communities, and our world.
Doing the inner healing work of letting go of what is not nourishing to who you truly are changes more than your own life.
It can help change the world.
Changing the world begins within each of us. The more we live in the unobstructed presence of Love within, the more love we have to bring into the world.
What do you call yourself in your inner-world conversations?
What might you call yourself that reminds you that you do not have to earn Love?