For those of us who grew up believing the lies we were told about being worthless, useless, stupid, and unable to do anything right, self-loathing seems imminent. Learning about how to love followed by implementing love for yourself changes that.

As I write, I have a vision of a vase with a few pebbles in it.  Pebbles don’t usually belong in vases.

For me, that represents the beginning of my life. My brother Ron recently told me that he was snooping around the drawers in mom and dad’s bedroom about 73 years ago and found a birthday card for our dad. It was from mom.  Mom just found out she was pregnant with me. The card was signed with one word, a nasty word that rhymes with the word brick.  I was unwanted and unloved long before I was born.

These were the first pebbles in that vase. They grew in number on a daily basis.  The only emotion I felt for my parents was fear. I was even afraid to think anything about them. I couldn’t. My only hope was Jesus.  My only escape was getting out of that house.  It wasn’t about loving myself; it was about survival. I could only survive.

That vase of pebbles filled up quickly.  It kept expanding to hold more.  It was full when I was in Monte VIlla Hospital and met my counselor. That counselor's wisdom and acts of love toward me was the beginning of my learning to love myself. That was the start of removing those pebbles one by one. In 2026, that vase still has pebbles.  Their number decreases with each act of self love I carry out.  Some events put a pebble or two back in the vase.  I do my best to think and act in love in order to remove them.

I’m still learning. It’s getting easier.  I’m learning to take care of myself and not allow myself to stay in negative situations.  God’s helping me with that.  I’m also cognitively working on it. The method is coming soon…

Going back to the teachings and words of Jesus, he said that we will do greater things than he did.  That almost sounds impossible.  The one thing that I can do that Jesus never did or never had to do is to stop a thought.  Jesus only thought what the Father thought, said what the Father said, and did what the Father said to do.  That’s a no brainer.  He never had a negative thought about anything and instinctively knew what to do in every situation.  He did it all  in love.  He never had to stop any thought. Stone that woman because she sinned?  Let someone without sin throw the first stone, he said.  He was teaching them love.  And then he taught it to the woman by telling her to go and sin no more.  No judgement, no punishment, no guilt inferred toward those men.  It was a lesson in love.

Stopping your thoughts is not easy.  My take on it is, if you stop the thought, you stop the words, you stop anything that can lead to opinion or judgement.  In other words, stopping the thought keeps you in a state of love.

I often have to stop my  thoughts.  That in itself is an act of self love, particularly when someone has done or said something that can be hurtful or offensive.  I find myself in that position quite frequently, especially when on social media. A story follows of how I found myself in one of those situations in a public area and how it was steered to handling it with self love.

I purchased a ticket for a local fundraising event, a whale watch.  I asked a former coworker if she’d like to go with me.  Her response was that it’s going to be so much fun. We’re going to have a great time.

Once at the harbor, we were all given a colored number to hand to a deckhand on our boat.  We noted she had a different colored ticket than I. One color ticket was for a boat that had a bar.  They served blue margaritas, known as glacieritas, as the color matched the color of glacier water. The other boat didn’t have the same amenities.  We switched tickets to the boat with the glacieritas.

As we were waiting to leave, she was visiting with others around us.I walked with her as she approached a crew member of one of the boats.  She started to talk about her job with their cruise ships.  That part of their business is closed for now.  I interjected that I was on their last cruise.  Suddenly she screamed so loud that silence surrounded us. “I WAS TALKING ABOUT MY JOB!”

I wanted to run to my car, go home, and lick my wounds.  I remained silent.

There was no thought as to whether that was kind, unkind, or even appropriate.  There was no thought about the many people who stopped everything because of this outburst. The only thought was to take care of myself.  Taking care of myself has been in the works for decades.  I don’t ever remember thinking that I needed to take care of myself before this.  That’s progress!

The solution was simple.  I switched my ticket to the boat that had no amenities. As I was walking down the gangway toward the vessel, she yelled to me that I was getting on the wrong boat.  I turned around to say that I was not.

I had no idea this was the better boat!  The windows were huge and slid open.  There would be no jostling with others for space to see the whales on an open deck.  Your window opened up to the world of the whales. 

It was such a marvelous trip!  At one point we had whales breaching in front of us and behind us at the same time. One of the whales did something the naturalist said he’s never seen before.  He called it tail slapping.  The whale's back end was high out of the water, much higher than when they dive.  It was straight up and down. The whale began to repeatedly slap the water with its tail. It would go beneath the surface of the water, come up for a breath and repeat that behavior. 

Depending on where you are spiritually and/or how you think, you may wonder if that was a gift for learning to love yourself.  It could be.  All I know is I am very grateful for it and that I chose the better and higher path by stopping the thought and engaging in an act of self love. 

More pebbles come out of that vase.  It  grows smaller every day I choose to live in love.