I Fell In Love

In my last blog post I talked about dreaming of love, and the kind of love I wanted to have in my future.

I have fallen back in love, and it’s the most important love that you will ever have. I have fallen back in love with someone who knows me best. Someone who is so in tune with me and teaches me something new every day.

I have fallen back in love with myself (in comes Arianna Grande “cuz her name is Ari, and I’m so good with that”). This is the best kind of love you will ever have. It is the only love you will always have in your life, and yet it’s the type of love we continuously hurt. We hurt our self-love in more ways than one, especially us women who think we need to fit into all of societies views on what being a "perfect" woman is. News flash, women are freaking awesomely different and unique and that’s the way it should be.

I had fallen out of love with myself and started falling into a terrible relationship with society, and what society said is beautiful. I stopped working out for myself and started working out to keep my partner interested in me (that worked out well). I figured a nice body would keep him around forever, and clearly, I was SO wrong. I put myself down every day after he left me, thinking there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t in the best shape I could be in, which was so stupid because hello honey you are pregnant and need to own your curves. I came up with an endless list of things that were wrong with me and insisted that those things were why he left me. I woke up one day and realized, that although I have flaws like any other human, my physical appearance was not the reason. I was perfect the way I was, and I needed to fall back in love with myself.

I started working out again, and this time it was for myself. I loved how I felt after a workout, even if I wasn’t lifting heavy like I used to. I started to incorporate more cardio and taking Willow for walks more frequently (she needed love too). I got excited to be back in the gym and was making more time to dedicate to staying healthy. My workouts recently have been more fun than in the past, and I have learned to embrace my new body, baby bump and all.

I began a self-care routine that I did (almost) every night. I would take a nice hot bubble bath, sometimes I would even throw a bath bomb in there. I would lather myself up with some coco butter to make my skin feel smooth, and I would do face masks when I needed some extra skin care love. I started to feel myself again, and I was loving every second of it.

I opened my life to new friendships. Although I had a ton of friends who I was comfortable opening up to, I realized that my past attitude of “I can do this by myself, I don’t need help” wasn’t healthy. In reality you can’t do everything by yourself, and you need all the friendships and support you can get. I rekindled old friendships that ended for silly reasons, and started new friendships with people I barely knew.

Self-Love is the most important love you will ever have in your life. Take care of it the same way you would take care of anything else important in your life.

In the wise words of J. Cole

"Love yourself girl, or no body will."