You feel you have too many scars, past hurt, and broken bits to be loved. Maybe you worry that your past experiences and the trauma they caused make you unloveable and unworthy of having a healthy relationship, but this is a lie. No one is ever too broken to be loved, especially not you. When you feel like you’re lacking, here’s what you need to remember.
- No matter what the voices say, you’re good enough. You seem to have an endless stream of voices in the back of your mind chirping at you that you aren’t good enough. They whisper awfully mean things to you that cause you to shut down or to self-sabotage in relationships. These voices may be a permanent resident in your mind, but you can learn to turn down the volume and replace them with thoughts that you are indeed good enough.
- This very belief is holding you back from finding someone who can love you. As poet Cindy Anneh wrote, “If you keep avoiding self-love, the universe will keep sending you people who also avoid loving you, hoping you get a little clue.” The very voices that are telling you that you aren’t good enough are the ones that are controlling your fate if you let them. The belief that you don’t deserve love is keeping you from finding someone who can love you how you need to be loved.
- Your scars are warrior paint, showing the world your strength. An unknown author said, “A scar simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” Scars are wounds of a warrior, not of someone who is weak. They mean that you survived. Maybe your scars are physical or they’re metaphorical, but either way, they’re only an indication of your strength and grit.
- Your cracks are the very parts of you that give you a chance to heal. There’s a line in Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” that goes, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Think of those flowers growing through concrete. That’s you. You’re such a warrior that the light got to you through a crack in the concrete and you’re now sprouting through the surface. Don’t compare your growth to others around you as they haven’t been through what you’ve been through.
- Your mistakes don’t make you flawed, they make you human. Maybe your past is riddled with events and circumstances you aren’t proud of. Even if some of these things were totally self-inflicted, I have news for you: you’re still a lovable human being. Your mistakes don’t mean that you’re a broken and flawed person, they just mean that you’re joining the rest of the human race in royally messing up sometimes. Any guy worth your time will hold space for the good parts of you as well as the messy parts.
- Let your girlfriends love you until you learn to love yourself. Maybe even self-like sounds really challenging right now. Self-love seems completely out of reach. Don’t worry your pretty little mind. Surround yourself with a group of powerful and loving women who will love you to pieces. They’ll teach you how to love yourself and they’ll remind you during the hard days that you are indeed worth loving.
- Shame is something that was done to you; it is not yours to hold. Maybe the shame and guilt that you hold is a result of a traumatic childhood. I’ll let you in on a little secret: shame is something that is done to you. It comes from an outside source. Shame is often a result of trauma, abuse, and/or neglect. So, those feelings you hold that you are innately bad were placed on you. This was not your fault, but it’s now up to you to change the tapes playing in your mind. Letting go of shame is a long and arduous process, but it’s worth it in the end.
- Your past makes you the perfect person to help the next girl in your shoes. Depending on where you are in your journey, it may bring you comfort that you’ll be a powerful example for the next girl in your shoes. When you find some healing and begin to piece together bits of self-love, you’ll have so much insight to offer another girl who thinks she’s broken. Your advice will mean much more to her because you’ve been in her shoes.
- You can never hear that you’re lovable and worthy enough, and that’s okay. When you feel as if you’ve been broken down too much to be loved, it makes a lasting impact. Although you can definitely heal and put the pieces back together, it may always feel like something is missing. You’ll learn to live with this ache. It may mean that in relationships and friendships, you have to be reminded that you’re lovable and worthy often. This is okay. I’m not saying it’s okay to be totally dependent on others, but it is okay to have a level of dependency. We need people and there’s no shame in that.
- You deserve to heal. Some people, especially those with childhood trauma, feel a sense of guilt when they start getting better. They feel that they don’t deserve to heal after the hell they’ve just gone through. It may be a survivor’s guilt. I’m here to tell you that you deserve to heal unconditionally. There is nothing that makes you any less deserving of healing. Give yourself that gift.
