The Blueprint

For most of my life, I gave love away as though it were something I had an endless supply of. 

I gave it to my mother.

I gave it to my children.

My friends. 

The people I hoped would stay. 

I just never thought to save any for myself.

I wasn’t taught where love came from or how to obtain it. 

Truthfully my mother couldn’t have taught me because no one taught her. 

No one gave us a blueprint.

I learned the hard way after burnout, addiction, and repeated trauma that the love I was desperately searching for from others was living inside me all along.

I had just been giving it away without considering myself. 

I gave and gave until I had nothing left to offer myself.

I kept giving it away un- reciprocated, until my cup was empty.

The emptiness consumed me… I needed to soothe it so I reached for things to numb it. 

Not because I wanted to destroy myself, but because I didn’t know any other way. 

I did what my mother did.

I reached for numbing agents like cigarettes, alcohol, and cannabis. 

Trying to fill my cup with anything that made me feel a little less empty, less alone.

I searched for it in people.

I left those relationships even emptier than when I entered them.

I had been giving it away, hoping someone would finally return some to me. 

I couldn’t stand the woman in the mirror.

She had become everything I resented. 

I avoided mirrors.

My own reflection hurt too much to look at.

I would say awful things to myself.

I wouldn’t tell my child, “You look like trash” so why was I telling myself that in the mirror?

If I wouldn’t let my daughter wake up and numb her pain with substances, why should I?

I spent so many years asking other people to tell me I was worthy.

It never occurred to me to ask myself.

Then…. 

I asked myself a question I had never asked myself before.

What if the love I constantly give away isn’t exclusively for others, 

What if some of that love actually belongs to me? 

What if I started treating myself with the love I so freely gave everyone else?

What if that is the blueprint?

So I started small… 

Tiny acts of self-love that grew into bigger moments and victories.

Slowly, I began to bloom and I realized that the love I had started to show myself was having a ripple effect on the world around me and the people I love.

One day at a time I watched love transform my life. 

From the inside out.

Not because everyone around me suddenly changed.

But because I did.

The first person who finally treated me like someone worth loving…

… was me. 

Everything else grew from there.

Maybe the blueprint wasn’t something I had to find…

It was something I had to learn to embody.