Love First, Heal Second
How Choosing Love Over Lack Led to True Healing
I used to think that to heal my body, I needed to lose weight, reduce inflammation, and choose the right diet.
Once I accomplished those goals, I would be healed.
Once I was healed, then I would love myself.
But I had it backwards.
Truth is, you can’t heal yourself without love. Without love, it doesn’t matter if you hit your goal weight, find the “perfect” diet, or meditate every day. Healing without love just perpetuates feelings of not enoughness and lack.
Which is why you need to love first, heal second.
When we choose to love ourselves exactly as we are, healing isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable. In fact, healing becomes effortless as we start to attract the exact healing we need at the perfect time.
So, if you’re on a healing journey, but you’re stuck in feelings of not enoughness and lack, this post is for you.
From Lack to Love
From 2020 to 2022, I gained about 20 pounds. It really wasn’t a lot, but the extra weight made me feel heavy, listless, and not like myself. I’m an active person and I eat well. But for whatever reason, every attempt I made to lose those 20 pounds ended in failure.
I spent a year going to the gym consistently weight lifting, and ended up gaining weight.
I practiced yoga several times a week and gained some stubborn repetitive injuries for my trouble.
I cut certain foods from my diet and spent most of my time craving those foods feeling discouraged.
At the time, I blamed the healing.
I’d say, “I guess weight lifting isn’t for me” or “I’m going to yoga too much” or “that diet was too restrictive.”
But last year, I finally realized the healing itself wasn’t the problem. It was my intention behind the healing.
I wasn’t trying to lose 20 pounds from a place of love.
I was trying to lose weight because I wanted to:
look good
fit in better
prove I was healthy
be more attractive to my partner
I was ashamed of my body and felt like I wasn’t where I “should” be in my life. I was using the gym and my diet, not to heal, but to punish myself for not being enough.
Looking back, I see so clearly that I was never going to lose the weight like that.
We Choose Our Healing
I’m a firm believer that we choose our healing.
We choose:
When we are ready to heal.
The perfect modalities to heal our unique wounds.
To allow or reject that healing.
As soon as we are ready to make a change (whether that's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or a combination of the above), the healing we need will appear.
Then, all that's left is to make a whole-hearted commitment to that healing.
Commitment is the missing piece in a lot of healing journeys. Without commitment, we give up at the first sign of resistance and allow ourselves to retreat to the comfort of the known rather than doggedly pursuing the unknown. (Read more about commitment here)
Between 2020 and 2022, I thought I was choosing my healing with the right intentions. I thought committing to weight lifting three times a week, yoga twice a week, and meditation once a day, I was making the necessary healthy choices to lose weight. I wanted to feel comfortable in my body again.
But underneath all of that was a feeling of not enoughness, un-deservingness, and self loathing. I didn’t really believe I deserved a healthy body.
And if I couldn’t love myself at my lowest, heaviest point, there was no way I was going to love myself enough to create that healthy body.
Healing from Lack
It’s a sign of our great intelligence that we are even able to doubt our worth. No other living thing doubts it’s right to live the way humans do.
The problem is our mind. It takes in evidence from the world around us and forms certain beliefs around what we need in order to be enough.
Your beliefs are unique to you.
You may think you need more money, more possessions, more wealth to be enough.
You may think you need to be skinny, fashionable, or muscular to be enough.
You may think education, intelligence, and reason make you enough.
You may think faith or spirituality make you enough.
Each of us has to wage a battle against the mind to feel like we are enough when in reality
We exist and so we are enough.
Without Love
So many people approach healing from the mind and lack, instead of from the heart and love. But without love, our healing is used to either:
Reinforce the idea that we aren’t good enough
Punish us for not being enough
No matter how good the healing, no matter how sound the science, or how much evidence proves the healing works, if you approach healing from a place of lack, you won’t heal.
It is possible that you will meet your healing goals, but without love, there will always be an underlying feeling of not enoughness that keeps you to searching for more.
Heal with Love
I forget what exactly spurred the change but a little over a year ago, I decided to start loving myself again.
I think I was just tired of avoiding my own eyes in the mirror, of shaming myself for a few extra pounds, of feeling not enough.
So, I decided to love my extra 20 pounds with every fiber of my being.
Whenever I showered, I would pause before getting dressed and rub my hands across my tummy, repeating the mantra, “You are loved. You are enough. You are beautiful and everybody loves you.” Throughout the day, I made an effort to pause by every mirror and tell my reflection she was smart, lovely, beautiful, strong.
Learning to love your body isn’t something that happens overnight. It is a repetitive and sometimes odious practice analyzing your relationship with your body.
But after a while, self love becomes a habit rather than a forced practice.
It was at that point, when I finally accepted and loved my body that the healing I needed to finally lose weight appeared.
The Perfect Program at the Perfect Time.
When the healing finally appeared, I was ready.
I was deeply committed to loving myself and the healing program that found me reflected that. Instead of making me feel not enough, the healing supported me in loving myself.
From there, healing became effortless because I no longer felt like something was missing. I didn’t need to change, I just wanted to continue loving my body in the way that felt best to me.
I saw that those 20 extra pounds actually showed up right when I needed them. They reconnected me to my body and showed me how to heal with love.
A few months into the program, the weight began to fall off my body.
First, 5 pounds, then 20, then 10 more after that.
After five years of trying to lose weight, I’d finally found the healing I’d been searching for:
Love first, heal second.
Are You Healing from Lack or Love?
All in all, I lost 30 pounds since I began practicing self love, but that’s not what I’m most proud of. In fact, the weight loss feels more like an added bonus next to the deep energetic healing that took me from lack to love.
If you are on a healing journey, I beg you, take a moment to consider:
Are you healing to punish yourself for not being enough?
OR
Are you healing from a place of love and enoughness?
Above all else remember that you are inherently worthy of healing. That you are beautiful and everybody loves you. That you deserve the world. And that the only one who will ever be able to tell you any differently is yourself.
When you come from a place of love instead of lack, your healing is inevitable. The healing you need will appear and the results you see will be beyond what you could possibly imagine.
And if all else fails know that you will have my love,
Always and forever,
P.S.
Want to read more about self love?
Read this→ Three Self Love Practices for Entrepreneurs
Or practice my favorite self love meditation!
Meditate here→ Love Yourself to Sleep
This Week’s Journal Prompt:
If I could write a love letter to the part of myself I'm struggling to accept, what would I say?
Also, don’t forget to share this with someone who approaches healing from lack not love!