Another Year of Practicing Everything I Preach

Today is my birthday.

And instead of a highlight reel, I want to tell the truth.

Loving myself did not come naturally.
It was not intuitive.
It was not soft, aesthetic, or easy.

It has been eight years of excruciatingly intense work.

I did not start from self-love. I started from self-devaluation. From overworking. From overextending. From proving my worth through productivity, usefulness, and endurance. From believing rest had to be earned and joy had to be justified.

I was very good at functioning.
I was very bad at choosing myself.

Let’s be clear about the middle part

There is a massive gap between self-hate and self-love that almost no one talks about.

You don’t leap from one to the other.
You pass through a long, awkward middle.

The middle looks like:

  • noticing how you talk to yourself without fixing it yet

  • stopping yourself from piling on when you mess up

  • choosing neutral language instead of cruel commentary

  • resting without calling yourself lazy

  • setting boundaries while still feeling guilty

  • doing kind things for yourself without feeling worthy of them

These are microactions. And they matter more than affirmations ever will.

How you feel about yourself is built through hundreds of tiny, boring, repeated choices. The way you plan your day. The way you recover after a mistake. The way you speak to yourself when no one is watching.

Self-love is not a declaration.
It’s a pattern.

And since it’s my birthday, let’s talk some shit

This journey has not been graceful.

I have cried.
I have sweat.
I have lost my shit.
I have lost friends.
I have hurt people I cared about.
I have hurt myself.
I have failed over and over and over again.

I have made choices I’m proud of and choices I wish I could redo. I have outgrown relationships. I have stayed too long. I have left too late. I have learned things the hard way because apparently that is my brand.

There was no moment where I felt like I had “arrived.”

In fact, I didn’t even realize I had conquered anything until I looked up one day and realized I had been showing up differently for a while.

That’s the part people don’t tell you.

You don’t feel powerful while you’re becoming powerful.
You feel tired. Confused. Doubtful. Human.

What the work actually looked like

It looked like going to therapy when I would rather stay busy.
It looked like sitting with discomfort instead of overriding it.
It looked like untangling my worth from my output.
It looked like letting people be disappointed and not rushing in to fix it.
It looked like practicing boundaries long before they felt natural.
It looked like choosing alignment even when it cost me comfort.

And it took years.

Not because I was doing it wrong.
But because this kind of change is slow, layered, and deeply humbling.

You don’t wake up one day loving yourself.
You build a relationship with yourself the same way you build one with anyone else. With consistency. With honesty. With repair. With effort.

And this year, that relationship looks different

This year, I booked myself a nine day Mardi Gras road trip.

No apology.
No justification.
No waiting for someone else to be available.
No minimizing how much it matters to me.

Nine days of celebrating myself.
Nine days of doing things I’ve never done before.
Nine days of investing time, money, energy, and intention into my own life.

Not because I need to escape my life.
But because I finally trust myself enough to enjoy it.

That choice didn’t come from impulse. It came from years of learning how to support myself. How to plan in a way that honors my energy. How to use structure as care, not control. How to choose joy without punishing myself for it later.

That is self-love in practice.

This is my call to action

Self-love is not a feeling you wait for.
It is a relationship you build.

It is choosing yourself when it would be easier to default to old patterns.
It is investing in yourself without needing to earn it first.
It is letting your life reflect who you are becoming, not who you had to be to survive.

And it is never too late to start.

If you are still in the phase of overworking, overextending, minimizing, and delaying joy, I see you. I was you. And I promise you this.

The work is brutal.
And it is worth it.

Today, I am celebrating not because I arrived, but because I stayed. Because I kept choosing myself even when it was uncomfortable. Because I built a relationship with myself strong enough to hold joy, rest, and expansion without collapse.

Another year older.
Still practicing.
Still choosing.
Still wildly committed to loving myself in ways that actually count.

And if you take nothing else from this, take this.

You are allowed to invest in yourself.
You are allowed to celebrate yourself.
You are allowed to build a life that reflects your worth.

Not someday.
Now.

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