How Women Can Learn To Love Themselves

“I am beloved. I am my sacred essence. I live in sisterhood. I am the expression of love. I am.”

For many of us, these words feel strange and unfamiliar, and we would never apply them to ourselves. Society has taught us to see our sacred feminine as unworthy of respect. But that cannot be farther from the truth. We need to learn how to speak of ourselves with a deep respect for who we are. We deserve to see ourselves as worthy, to honor our sacred essence and the sacred bonds between us as expressions of the Divine Feminine.

Studies in epigenetics show that when we affirm something and keep repeating it, sooner or later our brains believe it. We know this intuitively. We tell children to be kind, praise their hard work, and let them know how special they are. In this way, children develop with these words as guideposts and hopefully grow into kind and hardworking adults. Yet many of us fail to use the same positive energy on ourselves.

Words penetrate the mind, body, and spirit. When you surround yourself with self-hatred, you disconnect from Divinity. I found myself embracing negative images of myself as a child when I was living in Colombia during a drug war and was forced to leave family, friends, and home behind. I became obsessed with negative energy, which led to anorexia, chronic health problems, and to hormonal and thyroid imbalances later in life. Many of us struggle daily with the memories of trauma from sexual abuse, emotional battering, abandonment, or poverty. This negative energy affects both the mind and body.

Dear sisters, we are more than our trauma. You deserve better. You deserve to love yourself. When we acknowledge and become aware of our situation, we can begin to look at our Divine Body as a gift and not a curse. Then and only then can we reconnect to the truth that lives in each of us.

We cannot create a life of beauty and love if the words we use to talk to and about ourselves are ugly. Certain indigenous cultures, like the Yoruba of Nigeria, for instance, believe that words once spoken are taken by the wind and become the truth of that person. If you believe you deserve to be happy—and you do, my dear sisters!—then turn your negative words and thoughts into ones that fuel your creativity. Change:

Should to I can

I have to to I want to

I can’t to I will try my best

I’m dying to to I’d really like to

I’m not good at that to I can do better

I’m unlucky to I deserve better

It’s time to meet your beloved self. Changing old beliefs takes commitment. Learning to love our bodies is a necessary tool we can use to make the critical connection with our sacred selves. So repeat after me: “I am beloved. I am my sacred essence. I live in sisterhood. I am the expression of love. I am.”