Self love has enabled me to find relationships that sustain me. It has enabled me to extricate myself from harmful structures and find ways that are aligned with my values and fulfill my needs. It has allowed me to course correct without getting completely overwhelmed with self-doubt. It has helped me to hold the struggles, pain, trauma, and resilience of others. It has created space in me to witness myself and my community. I practice self love imperfectly, with a great deal of stopping and starting, wobbling, faltering, and frustration. But I continue to practice it, and imperfectly or not, my life continues to change as a result.

Often, periods of growth mean, by necessity, periods of discomfort. It is not comfortable for our bones to grow in adolescence, so we have a word for this particular sensation—growing pains. It is not comfortable for hermit crabs to expose their softer parts as they exchange shells, it is not comfortable for invertebrates to molt their exoskeletons, it is not comfortable for snakes to move through the shed process.