If you've been following me on Instagram and Facebook (if you haven't, get your tush over!), you have probably seen me talk a lot about fierce love and self love and the messy truth that happens when we look for love outside of ourselves to validate our worth.
I have been sharing these messages because it's my deepest truth and personal story. I know from the depths of my bones that when you feel a void and incomplete, it leads you to some dark places.
What I thought about myself was awful. I thought I had a secret gene that made me unworthy of being love, unworthy of being desired and worse of all, unworthy of being respected.
This journey is not all pretty, and with social media we are all going to choose those moments that usually we share once we have gone through the fire, because let's be honest, while we are in the fire, we can barely move, let along share. It's key to be honest, though.
Radical honesty with myself was what saved me. My life would have been ruined if I had stayed in that abusive relationship years ago, or if I kept looking for love in relationships that didn't serve me. I had to get honest.
I had to stop and say I am miserable. I can't keep going like this. I can't breathe. I feel like shit and I need another way. It isn't that I necessarily believed that I knew the other better way or that I was worthy of another way, it was simply that I felt I would DIE of misery this way, and that's all I needed to know.
Sometimes all you need to know and admit to yourself is this simple and revolutionary sentence...
This just doesn't FEEL good to me anymore.
That line is your soul guiding you towards your true salvation, that is your soul gearing you to let go of what not longer feels good anymore.
Of course there were so many times where I slipped up and would let my mind convince me that the comfort of the familiar was better than the anxiety and effort it would take to grow, but it never lasts. Because I live to grow and expand and to really walk my talk. I knew I couldn't live in the misery and so eventually I would always come back to the voice of my soul.
I also started to realize that the more I chose to do the real work and commit to self-love in the hard moments, the easier it was for me to believe my worth and feel my worth.
I knew that it was time for me to stop playing small and for me to really EMBODY that which I teach in Fierce Love Fierce Life, Fierce Love Mastery, and my Goddess Retreat, not only for me, but for all the women that were struggling with remembering their worth. Because when one shines we all shine. Here are some of the wisdom and lessons that I re-discovered while on my journey to Fierce Love:
1. You do not need to be in a relationship to be happy
For so long, I thought that if I wasn't in a relationship that somehow I wasn't good enough or something was wrong with me. I based my worth on the title of my relationship status instead of on my inherent inner worth. This in turn always left me feeling sad and unfulfilled. The truth is that there is a big illusion that all the people in relationships are happy and all is beautiful and perfect (especially with social media now) and the truth is you don't know the struggles one goes through behind closed doors. This isn't to say that people aren't genuinely happy, but you can't judge a book by it's cover. Being in a relationship doesn't imply happiness and not being in one doesn't imply the need to not be happy. I have been in relationships where I felt lonely and full of anxiety and I have been single and felt more confident and fulfilled than ever. Your state of happiness is dependent on YOU -- not on your relationship status.
2. Women (and men) are designed to crave affection
So often we get hard on ourselves about not being strong enough to be on our own and be independent and not desire to be in a romantic relationship and find the love of your life, and so often we beat ourselves up for not being fully okay with being single. Here is the thing, we are created to be in partnership of some kind, we are created to have community; we are created biologically and emotionally to thrive with touch and love and sex and romantic partnership. There is nothing wrong with your desire to want that. Don't feel bad for desiring a relationship and craving affection; we need that, it's normal. The problem isn't your desire, the problem is when your desire blinds you that it takes you into a desperate mode where you are on a rampage looking for love in all the wrong places with all the wrong energy. If you sit, with your pure authentic desired to be loved, touched and in a relationship -- that's honest. Just be patient and hold out for what you desire my love ;)
3. Curing codependency is a journey.
Codependency is able putting people's needs above your own, filling our worth and values based on other people. Co-dependency is a process of recovery back into loving yourself, owning who you are and what you need and believe and standing for that. It's about creating healthy boundaries, and it takes time. It takes slipping up and rising up, time and time again. Your job is not to be perfect; your job is to choose to invite in courage and love anytime you slip up or feel you are about to go downward. Your job is to simply keep choosing the way of recovery and the way of the soul. Plus, enjoy the journey, as you enjoy and give yourself praise throughout your journey, the ride gets sweeter!
4. What is the root of your desire to be loved?
I always thought that what I was looking for when I was begging my ex-abuser to stay with me was his love. I was blinded and thought it was his approval I wanted, I wanted him to love me, to accept me, to take me for who I am, exactly as I am. I wanted it to work. The truth of what I really wanted was emotional safety and security -- I wanted peace. I had grown up in a hostile environment mixed with both tender love and abrasive abusive verbal abuse and criticism. So my love blueprint was fragmented; I wasn't use to safety and security and full acceptance of who I was as I was, so I was looking for that in that man. I would do ANYTHING to get it, even if it meant losing my worth, sanity and peace. I was blinded by the goal, GET THE LOVE, that I didn't realize the real goal that I wanted. I just wanted true safety and security. Once I made that mental shift, I realized I wasn't getting my needs met there, and I left. It was a process, but my goal was now reset. I wanted emotional safety and security and peace, and I wasn't getting that there, so I had to give it to myself by walking away. Get honest about your real soul goal. What is the feeling you actually want to feel, and go after that honest feeling of safety that you want.
5. Don't wait for love to feel love
Don't wait for romantic love to come into your life for you to feel and embody and experience love now. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is you can't solve the problem by focusing on the problem, you have to solve the way you react to the problem. Obsessing over the guy, the situation, the fears won't solve anything. It just gets you into a bigger slump and gets you drained and insecure. You know what does help, though? It helps for you to pour love and gratitude into this moment. To start living as if you had everything you want NOW, to live with passion, with purpose, with joy, with fun and adventure NOW. Because the more you do this, the more light you bring into your life and your heart and the more you can see clearly. Because the more you love and are happy about your life, the better choices, experiences and people you will choose. So, don't wait for love to feel love. Feel love now today. Feel the breeze, feel your breathe and go do something that makes you feel the love, now.
6. Commit to honoring the whole journey
It's so easy for everyone to get all excited and proud when the journey has ended and you have hit that goal. You find the love of your life, you get engaged, you get the promotion, you are making six figures or seven figures, you lose the weight, but the truth is the end result is made up of MANY tiny little actions and choices and ups and downs. We rarely see the process of the final masterpiece. We go to the museum to see the artist's finished piece, we see the relationship status go from in a relationship to engaged, we see someone get featured on Oprah Magazine and share their joys! But there are so many trials and tests that that person went through to get there. The relationship took work that you didn't see, the art took time and frustration and messiness to get to the final pieces. The mess is part of the beauty, the confusion, the journey is all part of the final journey. In western society we are obsessed with results, the journey is YOUR LIFE, enjoy the ride, get excited about everything about this journey -- because as you do this you realize that is truly life, not just the destination but actually the journeys we take to get there.
This is exactly what The Fierce Love Mastery (which now includes my amazing annual Goddess Retreat in Puerto Rico!) is about. We are going to have a select mastery group of 8 amazing women that are going to ENJOY and EMBODY Fierce Love Now and help each other to stay inspired and committing to aligning their thoughts, energy, and choices/lifestyle to that which they want, by living their lives full out NOW, it's going to be a blast and so transformative and I hope you'll join me.
I knew that this journey to self-love, to truly own my worth and fill myself with true inner love, wouldn't be easy. I had a difficult upbringing and lots of experiences that would have told me otherwise, but I decided to look for people and experiences that would challenge those fears. I chose to look for powerful examples and I said if they can I can. And I am making that choice everyday to do this work for both myself and for you all, because there is no other way. In being committed to this path of embodying fierce love, I can feel my insides becoming stronger, more miracles happening, better relationships forming and I know it's because of the work that I have been doing. It's not easy but always worth it. I know if you resonate with these words, then we can make massive shifts happen together in 2015, and I would love to help you.
With Fierce Love,
Christine