That Time I Did a Photoshoot
I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and into my bag
At the end of 2020, while writing down my goals for the new year, I promised on paper to be nicer to myself and lean into radical self-love. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what “radical self-love” looked like, but it was clear that my current state of affairs had to change. Love is interesting that way. For me at least, it’s always been much easier to love on and pour into others than it was to do the same for myself. I spent most of my adult life trying to give people the kind of love I always wanted. The type of love that is unconditional, without anterior motives. I have tried to give that kind of energy to a lot of people. Most were deserving, others took what they needed and left. But, no matter how hard I loved or how much I gave, there was always something missing. It took a pandemic, and some very honest personal conversations to realize that the piece missing was in me.
While I would give those around me, everything I had, I wasn’t prioritizing the most important person in this equation, me. That lack of prioritization happened for a lot of reasons, but the truth that rings the loudest is that I didn’t like myself. I would look in the mirror and count the ways I fell short, and because I never felt like enough, It lead me to believe that I didn’t deserve love. That lack of love leads to a lack of attention…