[bluidkiti]

March 25, 2013

Quote of the Week

"Let us love you until you learn to love yourself."

This is one of my favorite quotes and it meant so much to me in early recovery. When I got to the program the voices in my head were so filled with hatred and self-loathing that it was no wonder I was destroying my life. I remember sitting in meetings feeling so down on myself, and then I'd hear this saying and a dim light of hope would shine in me and I'd think, "If these people are willing to love and accept me, then maybe I'm not the lost cause I think I am."

I heard a speaker once talk about coming into the program with negative, destructive self-esteem. Boy could I identify. He then said that after years of working the steps, and after thousands of meetings, he'd actually been able to claw his way up to low self-esteem! We all laughed at this, but it taught me an important lesson - developing healthy self-esteem is a process that takes work.

Thank God I don't have to do this work alone. People in the rooms are glad to help me and love me while I work and grow and learn to love myself. It's not always easy, and I'm often my own worst critic, but by letting others in, by listening to their perception of me, and by accepting their love, I've indeed learned to have love for myself. And what a precious miracle that is for me today.