Broken but Loved...

It's Saturday and I'm kid-free for 2 hours, aaand my man ordered me pizza (my favourite food ever)! So while it was on its way I made my room into a sexy boudoir so I could get naked and capture myself eating my favourite food from all the angles( not just the 'good' ones) And I got to thinking a lot about this concept of self-love. Of being 'whole'. 'fixed' to meet someone who will truly love you.  An ex once told me it wasn't normal to date a woman with a kid. That I was 'lucky'. That his friends had sat him down and told him it wasn't fucking normal?!? And I believed that shit, on a deep level. So now not only was I a survivor with all the trauma that comes with that, pretty shit on loving myself AND 'damaged goods' (literally the worst phrase ever in the history of the world) there was no hope for me at all. But guess what... it was a LIE. Turns out we can be loved and heal simultaneously. Shit, we can have kids and wounds and pain and still be worthy of safe, caring, delicious love!

I am still a single Mum and a real guy (handsome kind, brilliant guy) loves me. Loves this broken old single parent sometimes traumatised little me. The idea that we can't heal and be loved simultaneously makes me sad. I have healed more in his safe care than flailing around by myself.

Truly loving yourself takes a lifetime (at least) and some days you nail it and some days you really don't. But we still deserve to be fucking loved. The culture of toxic positivity sucks. Yet another unachievable ideal to keep us down, sad and profitable. Don't I still deserve love when I'm triggered? When I'm crying snot bubbles out of my nose as well as when I'm naked and oily and eating pizza with my cat?

I'm not saying we shouldn't continue to love ourselves more and more but the idea we have to be a certain place before we can have a relationship is the loneliest load of crap. Maybe to love yourself you need to experience a new kind of love you were never shown.

Anyway, my pizza is getting cold and my child's return is drawing closer. Face packs and oily baths are great but so's too much pizza and snot bubble crying.
Love you, especially all the broken bits.