Moving Forward.
I recently worked with a blogger friend on the topic of self-love. She openly shared her insecurities, and I empowered her to embrace self-love and accept herself completely.
You can read her thoughts on struggling to love herself here. In my responses to this post, I questioned her about whether disliking herself was helping her achieve her goals and encouraged her to embrace herself completely.
We enjoyed working together, so she asked me what I was planning to write about for the upcoming week, and I mentioned my recent article, now already published, about moving forward, which came out this past Monday.
Thus, she suggested we exchange personal letters about what kept us from moving forward. Little did I know, by the time I said yes, that I would end up naked in the paper as I poured my heart out in that letter.
It was a cathartic experience for me, as I discovered some truths I hadn’t realized until I wrote them down. I hope it’s as helpful to you as it was for me.
The realization I had is that my current situation is as follows:
It’s onward or nowhere, my dear.
It ended up being such a profound, deep, and raw letter, as you can read for yourself in my Guest Post: Letter of Self-Love and Strength.
As Per Charli, whom you can find on Facebook, her touching letter is below:
Charli’s letter:
Dear Charli,
You were in middle school when your friend decided she didn’t want to be friends with you anymore. You saw clues to the end of the friendship. She no longer wanted to eat lunch with you anymore. But you were still hurt when she told you she no longer wanted to be friends. This friendship meant a lot to you. When you met your friend, she was new to the school. She quickly took a liking to you. It meant a lot to you that you were her first friend. She made new friends. And it was evident that her time as your friend had finished. You tried to ignore the signs and hang on desperately to this friendship.
It was the first close friendship you had ended this way and wouldn’t be the last. It was a significant blow to your confidence. You couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with you and ask yourself what you did to cause the friendship to end. Every time a friendship ends, you can’t help but think back on that time in middle school. You can’t help but think people are judging you, and you end up judging others in return. You assume they won’t like you immediately, and you try to guard yourself from being hurt.
She tells herself:
I’m here to tell you, Charli, everyone, including you, is lovable. There is nothing wrong with you. You are beautiful inside and out. For those who can’t see that or don’t want to take the time to see the beauty inside you, that is their loss. Also, focusing on the people who are uninterested in you and the lost friendship will only drain your energy.
You should focus your energy on those who love and cherish you, and I am sure you have more people who appreciate you than you notice. Moving on from past hurts is difficult, but letting the past control your present and future becomes a problem. There is not much you can do about the past.
That old friendship is over and done. You can, however, do something about your present and future. You can start by opening your heart to new friendships. It might not be easy letting people in; it means being vulnerable, but that is how love works. I wish you all the best with working towards letting go of the past so you can see the bright present and future before you.
Sincerely,
Charli
I honor us and you who read for daring to look within lovingly and understand our moving forward journey.
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