to beth, on her 32nd birthday.

i reread my own words from last week, my own refrain, echoing in my head:

it's okay to love yourself.

i assured myself, again and again, that it was true.

yes, it is okay to love yourself. it's necessary even. i was sure of it.

until this tricky question finally arose, once the wonder of this tragically new notion had worn off: what does that mean?

what on earth does it mean to love yourself?

a lot of cliché answers came up at first. things like: taking time for yourself, allowing space for relaxing, nourishing yourself, appreciating your own value and accomplishments. the things that kept coming up for me were all of utmost importance, but they were all things i've been doing. they were the symptom management tools, the external manifestations of a person, who ostensibly loves themselves. but that wasn't enough for me. i wanted to get at the root of it.

what is at the root of self love?

i asked myself again and again.

i read some poems. they always hold truths for me. i read some pema chödrön, looking for the same. i asked some of my friends. they had similar ideas to my own initial musings. all of these things held small kernels of it for me, but none of them really resonated.

but then, in one short email from a parent at school, it finally made sense to me.

the parent was hoping i'd be her daughter's teacher next year, because i was thinking of moving from my magical, ever-shifting puzzle of a teaching job to a regular classroom next year. after much deliberation, i decided to stay and keep on puzzling. she asked, in passing the other day, whether i'd be moving, and when i told her i wasn't, she was pretty heartbroken.

we exchanged some emails later in the day. she wrote some very kind things about why she hoped i'd be her daughter's teacher. i wrote back, as usual, too many words, some of which were the reasons i love her daughter. specific reasons. not broad generalizations. specifics.

and when she wrote back, again, i finally understood what it is at the root of all love, for yourself and for others, alike. she wrote:

You've broken my heart all over again. Having a teacher really be able to see your child is a gift.

she wanted to know her daughter was seen. that was it.

she didn't want the best dramatic play center or the best art projects or the most rapid acquisition of the ABC's. she just wanted her daughter to be seen for exactly who she was. and i saw her.

i realized this has always been true. this is how i have always consciously sought to communicate to parents that i love and care for their children. i make a point to acknowledge some small positive part of the child's day, each time the parent picks them up. so they know. i saw them. i see them.

i know what makes them laugh. i know how they act when they're tired. i know what and who pushes their buttons. i know what scares them. i know when they're ready to try new things, to be pushed. i know what motivates them, what their default is, what they're working on, where they're testing the waters. i know what they love. i know how they move, what they like to eat, how they laugh, how long they can go. i see them.

and that resonates in people. i cannot count the number of times i have said or done something simple that shows that i see them and a parent has said, thank you for loving my child.

so i got this far and it felt revelatory.

and then, in the same day, my brother's amazing girlfriend emailed me. she had made it through my long words from the other week and kindly offered some of her own thoughts on the process of learning to love oneself. she mentioned many times the idea of "understanding who you are," which felt the same as that same idea of being seen. it is simple observation of what is.

but then something else kept emerging too. she said she didn't have one simple magical thing to say. and yet she did. it was this word, again and again.

acceptance.

it's a word that gets tossed around a lot, but when i really think about it, it's fucking huge. acceptance is defined, loosely, as receiving something offered. it is taking what is given. it is not asking for something else.

so if step one is seeing, step two is accepting.

i thought about the babies some more. i thought about how i accept them.

i mean, if we're being real, they definitely make me insane plenty of the time. after so many hours of tiny people with loud voices, saying your name over and over and over and over and needing everything and crying and biting each other and wielding sticks as weapons of mass destruction some days i'm pretty over it. but i never blame them. i can get irritated, but then i remind myself, the four year old is being four.

i do not blame them for who they are. i do not ask them to be different. i ask them to treat others with kindness and respect. i ask them to push themselves. i ask them to find the edges of their comfort zone. i ask them to cultivate empathy and awareness. but i also acknowledge them right where they are and simply ask that they find a healthy way to express that space.

if that is not love, i cannot imagine what is.

it seems so easy when they're tiny.

it is so easy for me to say, i see you and i accept you. to give them the space and grace to just be. to acknowledge that they're growing and growing can be hard. it is so easy for me to love what is clearly doing the best they can with exactly what they have.

and yet i refuse to do it for myself.

i have found what, for me, is at the root of self love. it is understanding and accepting who i am. it is not fighting what is at my core. it is giving myself space to not even be sure what that is. it is not always waiting for something about me to change. it is the certainty that where i am right now is totally fine.

i've eaten like shit the past three weeks. i was stressed and working long days and endlessly emotional. i crammed myself full of all the food i could see. i gained five pounds in less than a month. i got my hair colored and it turned out yellow. too much iron in the blood. i cried about it. my house is a mess. there are beer cans on my front lawn in a vague circle that frames the baby pool that laid outside with four adult bodies crammed inside yesterday afternoon. i am vaguely hungover. i slept like shit and i am exhausted.

i also got some really wonderful affirmations from people i respect in the last few days. i got an email telling me my job from 10 years ago still owes me $300 in wages. my loving friends are throwing me a not-so-surprise surprise birthday dinner tonight. i have the best boyfriend and i am immensely loved.

it is all of these things and none of them being expressly good or bad. it is simply where i am. loving myself means looking at it all and not insisting that if things, if i, were even just slightly different then i would be better/ more valuable/ happier. loving myself is letting myself be uncomfortable with how uncomfortable that presently feels.

loving myself means treating myself like i would treat a child. with humor and ease and joy and acceptance. it is saying, beth is being beth. and letting it be.

to beth on her 32nd birthday, today you have reached the peak. you are at the top, because you are as high as you could go today. you are doing the best you can.

and that is enough.