Can you love yourself when nothing is going right? Or when your latest dreams, intentions, goals and/or ambitions are not yet met and fulfilled?
The other day I was listening to a very old recording on YouTube. It was a video. 1 hr, 14 minutes long. It was from the 90’s and I was doing light listening as my body and my evening wound down.
At some point the speaker invited the listener to join her for what wound up being a guided meditation as this recording was filmed in front of a live audience back then.
I meditate regularly and for many, many years now and while I don’t often need or like a guided meditation, and the audience she was speaking to was sitting up (as I usually do when meditating) in an intimate talk kind of setting, I had just laid down to listen so it was perfect timing for me.
My bedroom light was still on as I wasn’t quite ready for sleep, but I thought, “Oh this is unexpected. This should be fun.” So I closed my eyes to join in on the meditation she was taking her audience through nearly 30 years ago, in 1997. Here I was in February 2026, finding everything she was saying and doing completely relevant and aligned with me and my life, where I am, and where I am headed.
Eyes closed, I cleared my throat and took the deep inhale and exhale she instructed “us” to do as I quickly relaxed into my body.
Then…
Her voice: “I want you to find something about yourself that you love.”
Slight pause, and then she continued: “…That you know you love and is really good about you.”
Slight pause again, and then she continued: “Find something…a part of your body, a part of your character, a part of what you do in living that you love about yourself.”
And then: “Keep looking until you find it.”
She continued on a bit further on this track, but I didn’t hear anything else for a couple of minutes because I was already busy searching. Eyes still closed, forehead, eyebrows now somewhat scrunched, I’m sure, because it was taking more time than I expected. Scanning my brain or wherever for whatever I was looking for.
I got nothing. Or rather, nothing that felt true for me.
Her again: “Think of something you love about yourself”…this time encouraging the audience to “find something, anything, even if you have to create something right now. You can love your fingernails, you can love your toes.” - as if she anticipated some of us having trouble.
I love myself. I’m sure I do. Or I was sure before this.
The first time she gave the instruction, me being me, I certainly wasn’t going to choose something physical. Even if I was able to think of something quickly, that seemed silly and completely irrelevant to what I was doing in that moment.
I guess I could have told myself I love my smile, something she also suggested to the audience as an option if we couldn’t think of anything else. But that, along with other physical attributes, would have just been what other people say they love, notice, or are attracted to in and about me, because I don’t sit and look at myself or really see myself most of the time. And I rarely take pictures.
It also seemed silly or frivolous to say I love that I can think and write or be creative or help my clients or anything that is more about something I am capable of. I don’t know why, but these all seemed so silly and unrelated as things I felt I love about myself in that moment. My gifts? Perhaps. Things I appreciate? For sure. But for some reason they just feel like things I am able to do. Even though I also love what I do…in terms of my business and work and creations, and also my life. Go figure.
When it comes to character or even personality, I know I have a strong one. What many consider a good one. But again, this is as it is reflected by others to me and their experiences of me and so I don’t take it that personally - good or bad. Pretty much anything with me talking about myself even to myself in my head in that meditation seemed very odd to me. And this is all very odd to me now. That I think this way.
What’s odder is that I wrote and published a whole book two years ago and in it I ask the reader a similar line of questions. One is “What’s right about you?” Not exactly the same as what she asked, and I can feel that difference now. And I can also feel now that as we evolve, both answers and meaning to these kinds of questions change. They evolve. Duly noted.
So, for some reason after searching my mind and hearing silence, because I heard her say “even if it’s just your fingernails” in the background a few moments before, I just went with fingernails. (I actually do like my fingernails. It’s random, but I used to bite my nails as a teenager. I don’t know if it was out of nervousness or what, but I didn’t know they could grow, and very nice looking at that, until one day I stopped biting them. And so they grew, and quickly, as they still do now. I tend to wear them on the short side still, but when I let them grow and paint them people often compliment them and think I got them done in a fancy nail salon based on whatever nail trends are happening at any given time. I never do.)
I want to say that I was overthinking it, but it actually felt like I was underthinking because I seriously couldn’t think of anything.
In any case. Fingernails it was.
I took so much time trying to look for something I love about myself that at this point the speaker I was listening to had moved on further in her guided meditation. I had to mentally shake off where I’d just felt stuck, catch up like skipping down the street to catch up with friends, and rejoin the meditation where she now was.
I know (or thought) I loved the whole me. But I realized in that moment I need to start identifying and falling in love with the pieces of me. All of them. And not through the eyes of others.
I guess because I can and have always been able to take care of myself, I thought this was love. Self-love. I’m not so sure of that now. Or if that will be enough, now. And because, as with all things and systems, I know any whole is simply a sum (and only as good) as its parts, I’m going to start with the parts of me. Both small and big. I think I will start making a list.
Happy Valentine’s Day to me.
~ Suhailah 🩷✨
Spark, the gathering. - I’m hosting a small, private circle for shared inquiry this month for those who feel called. Details here.