Self-love.
How many books + blog posts + podcasts have been dedicated to this topic?
Writing about self-love is easy. Accepting and loving ourselves all day, every day is HARD. Like really hard.
While surfing around on Brain Pickings today, this pop up appeared…
I (of course) clickety clicked because who doesn’t want to know what it means to, “(really, finally) love yourself”.
“Love After Love” by Derek Walcott is exquisite.
Is it a poem about (as the pop up says) what it means to really, finally love yourself? Maybe. I mean, the beauty of poetry is that it’s open to interpretation, right?
Some say this poem is about healing after someone has broken our heart. But I like to think it’s about healing after we break our own heart with unkind words or actions. About unconditional forgiveness and always welcoming ourselves home.
Absolute self-love + acceptance has always felt like an impossible goal. But unconditional welcoming home – now that’s a notion I can embrace wholeheartedly. And maybe that’s what it means to (really, finally) love yourself.
LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
💙 Robyn