Finding Self-Love
You cannot heal a body you are at war with. Self-love and the quiet revolution of finally being on your own side. PLUS! My 12week Immersion is live. You deserve this. Apply Below.
Another radical notion from Christine that doesn’t get discussed in the wellness space. I’ve been visiting this idea in various podcast appearances, and explored the origin of self-love in my recent Webinar.
You can try every protocol. You can eat the most pristine food, take the supplements, do the cold plunges, track your sleep, optimize your mornings. And still — if there is a part of you that doesn’t truly believe you deserve to heal, that quietly judges your body for failing you, that carries a low hum of shame about where you are right now — none of it will reach the depths where healing actually lives.
I know this because I lived it.
For years, I strived to be the external picture of health. I owned a restaurant that served people the most beautiful, nourishing food and was immersed in the world of natural wellness. Yet internally, I was in a constant battle with my own body. Judging it. Pushing it beyond the breaking point. Never giving myself a break. There was always something more to fix. I had this background voice always whispering Why aren’t you cooperating? What am I doing wrong? Why are you betraying me? I am working so hard for this.
Truthfully though, in the quiet, beneath all the doing, there was a part of me that didn’t truly trust myself. Didn’t truly love myself. What I didn’t understand then is what I understand deeply now: the body cannot heal in an environment of self-rejection.
Here’s where our idea of self-love is all messed up.
We treat it like a practice. A morning ritual. A mindset we can adopt if we just read the right book or follow the right influencer. We put it on an Instagram story and call it wisdom. But really, all that projected performance - is searching for the love found within - outside of ourselves.
Self-love is not something you do. Just like any relationship, it can’t be forced. It is something that arises. Slowly. Quietly. As a consequence of something much more humble and much more real. It arises when you begin to witness yourself — your emotions, your fears, your symptoms, your very human experience — without immediately turning away.
It arises when you stop needing yourself to be different than you are right now, in this moment.
It arises when you learn, 30 seconds at a time, to hold your own experience with what I call compassionate curiosity — that tender, spacious quality of attention that says: I see you. You don’t have to earn my acceptance. You already have it.
That is where self-love actually begins. Not in affirmations. Not in a gratitude journal. In the quiet, repeated act of not abandoning yourself.
Our nervous systems are exquisitely intelligent. They hold the memory of every moment we turned away from ourselves. Every time we bypassed an emotion because it felt too big, too inconvenient, or too complicated to hold. Every time we received the message — from a parent, a doctor, our culture — that our body’s way of expressing itself is a problem to be managed rather than a wisdom to be heard.
Over time, this becomes the water we swim in. We don’t even notice we’re doing it anymore. The self-rejection becomes so familiar it feels like neutrality, and thats very tricky and difficult to notice. And yet, your body knows. The nervous system keeps a record. And it waits — patiently, faithfully — for us to finally turn toward it rather than away.
This turning toward is where self-love is born.
What I’ve witnessed in my own healing, and in holding space for others, is that self-trust comes first. Before love, there is trust. The willingness to be with yourself in the hard moments — not to fix them, not to transcend them, but simply to be there — and to discover that you can hold it. That you won’t be swallowed. That it will move through you, as all things do, if you give it the space.
As that trust builds, something else begins to stir. A softness. A sense of — oh. I’ve been so hard on myself. A recognition, sometimes tender, sometimes piercing, of how long you’ve been fighting against the very body that has been keeping you safe this whole time.
That recognition is not self-pity. The true recognition of ALL your body has been holding for you, this is the beginning of self-love. Real self-love. The kind that can actually hold your healing. A positive feedback loop begins to form.
You don’t have to love yourself to begin this work.
You don’t have to arrive at some healed, radiant, fully integrated version of yourself before you are worthy of tenderness. That is not how this works.
You simply have to be willing to stop turning away.
To sit with yourself — with your ache, your fear, your longing — for just a moment. Without judgment. Without it needing to mean anything. Without the story.
Just this moment. Just this breath. Just this body, doing its best, waiting to be met. That is enough to begin.
And from that place — slowly, at the pace of nature, in the way that a flower blooms not by being forced but by being tended — healing finds its way in.
If something in this resonated with you, I would love to hear what came up.
If you feel called to explore this work more deeply, I invite you to sign up for my 12 week Somatic Reset and Nervous System Immersion. Find true love within.
You are worth this journey back to yourself and this journey is not meant to be walked alone.
With so much love,
Christine
