Dear Saje,

Thank you for reaching out about your concern, and I hope I’m not too late to the ”party” haha,

Reading your post, I was overflowing with emotions. Most of it was empathy because I felt that many can share with you the same journey; that of healing your sense of self and re-claiming the love that you wished you had for yourself in a world that can be very cruel and unforgiving. In that sense, and such as this space here, we are all just looking for that ray of light that will keep us going and listening to our voices.

I tried to be a little poetic there to alleviate the heaviness of your post; a theme that I relate to as well. I think the best kind of advice that you could use right now, and from my own experience with self-love, is that you can give yourself everything that you need and want; it might sound weird at first, even a little naive, a little pretentious but at this point, I say take the risk to feel a little silly to feel good about yourself. It sounds like you are putting so much pressure on yourself so try to find ease in your life right now, only then do you get closer to your voice that will tell you what it is you really want and need right now. Try to also find some joy without holding yourself to a standard. Gratitude could be a game changer in this context. Finally, I left this because it is often the hardest thing to do for most, try to get familiar with the perspective of celebrating yourself. A little research on that perspective could do so much for you right now.

Before finishing this reply, I want to leave you with the words that a very competent person told me once: “Instead of thinking ‘I’m the only person to fall back’ on, think ‘I’m the best person to fall back on’ ”

I hope that you were able to feel better about this concern. We are cheering for you and belated happy birthday!

-Luna