Stay on Your Own Side

It’s easy to be kind to yourself when things are going well.

When you’re making progress.

When you feel confident.

When you’re proud of your choices.

When life seems to be confirming that you’re headed in the right direction.

It gets harder when things fall apart.

When you make the mistake you promised yourself you wouldn’t make again.

When you don’t get the opportunity.

When someone leaves.

When you lose your footing.

When you’re struggling with something you thought you had already moved past.

Those are often the moments when our relationship with ourselves changes.

We stop encouraging and start criticizing.

We question everything we’ve accomplished.

We use one difficult moment as evidence that we haven’t grown at all.

We say things to ourselves we would never say to someone we love.

And just when life has already knocked us down, we decide to join in.

But you need yourself then, too.

Especially then.

Self-love isn’t only believing wonderful things about yourself when you feel strong.

It’s staying on your own side when you’re disappointed in yourself.

It’s being able to say, I made a mistake, without turning it into I am a mistake.

It’s letting yourself have a difficult day without deciding you’ve created a difficult life.

It’s remembering that struggling with something again doesn’t erase all the work you’ve done.

None of this means avoiding accountability.

Sometimes loving yourself means having an uncomfortable conversation with yourself.

It means admitting where you were wrong.

Changing your behavior.

Making amends.

Trying again.

But accountability and abandonment are not the same thing.

You don’t have to punish yourself to prove you understand what happened.

You don’t have to withdraw your own compassion until you’ve earned it back.

And you don’t have to become your harshest critic simply because you’re not proud of where you are right now.

Anyone can stand beside the version of you who has it all together.

The deeper relationship is built with the version who doesn’t.

The one who is scared.

The one who is grieving.

The one who failed.

The one who doesn’t know what happens next.

The one who needs someone to say, We’ll figure this out.

Be that someone.

Because there will be moments in life when you cannot control who stays, what works out, or how quickly things get better.

But you can decide that whatever happens, you will not be another person who leaves you when things get hard.

This is your reminder:

Being there for yourself matters most on the days when you feel least deserving of your own support.

Slay on.