Self Care is About Love

Self Care is about Love: Wednesday Wisdom

I continue to reflect upon what is deep and nourishing self-care. I am asking myself, “What does it really mean right now in my life; how can self-care really touch me on a root level?” I tend to have many good habits, and yet, something is missing. I’m not feeling replenished on a deep level.

So the other day, when I began reflecting on the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” from Mark 12:31, I realized that I was in need of more interior love. My relationship with myself needed to be more rooted in love.

These are some of the things I am discovering about self-care, and about relating to self-care as a way of loving and being loved.

• Self care is really about your relationship with yourself
• Self care invites you into a place of deep self acceptance
• Self care allows you to connect with that interior place where you are abiding in God’s love, and God’s love is abiding in you.

Thomas Merton wrote in one of his journals: “For it is the unaccepted self that stands in my way and will continue to do so as long as it is unaccepted. When it is accepted, it is my own stepping stone to what is above me.”

Pause & Reflect: 

• How might you to engage in more self acceptance?
• How are you tending the holy by practicing the commandment of loving your neighbor and loving yourself?