The Spark of Self Love

Opening my eyes to Love

It started on my birthday. We’d arranged to spend the day together and he let me down. A no show, as he’s prone to do, with no explanation and no response at the end of the phone.

This particular unfulfilled commitment threw me like no other, it felt like the accumulation of all of the people that had ever let me down. All those flaky boyfriends and unreliable surfer buddies, with the added sting of it being my special day. This was the first ever birthday I had truly honoured myself by taking the day off work. Or so I thought.

Well, I crumbled. My birthday was spent sobbing in my office, lamely trying to salvage the day with client work. I was uncontrollable, wracked with an enormous pain, an ache that soared through my chest and stuck in my throat like goblet. I swear I lost half a stone in convulsions that day.

I felt pain at being alone at 36, the only woman I know who is. I felt sadness at having no child and no prospect of one. I felt frustration at my failed relationships and sorrow being so far from my family. I felt isolated for living in in the sticks and a failure as a friend. I now understand the word despair, it engulfed me.

But the next day, when the pain had eased, I woke to a shift inside me. I looked at myself and saw a woman that deserved to be treated with respect. Respected by her friends, family and partner, and, more fundamentally, by herself.

By consistently choosing friends that were fickle and lovers who let her down, it was inevitable she was going to be let down on her birthday. Her birthday, and pretty much every other day of her life.

This summer has taken me through the journey of emotions that run with a seismic shift - sadness, despair, anger, compassion, forgiveness, empowerment. And that’s where I am now, discovering my power for the first time. Believing that I’m worth something as a friend, a partner, a daughter, a consultant, hell, as a woman.