We need to walk in our own nurturance, delight in the pleasure of our own company, and contact our own child within

We need to be able to be in contact with ourselves. We need to walk in our own nurturance, delight in the pleasure of our own company, and contact our own child within—our child within that awaits our attention and affection. Then we can love others without strings attached. When we’re in full contact with our child within we can approach others without neediness or a hidden agenda or our old expectations of rescue.

If we were neglected as children, we enter adulthood as chronic dissociates. Now we must take the time alone, without the distractions or projections, in order to contact our child within. We must take the time to connect to the life force glowing within us.  A stages guide—a guide of caring and respect and boundaries and maturity—who witnesses our true value may provide us the first experience of loving-kindness we’ve ever had.

It is easy to avoid self-love by instead misusing others. We may project our child within onto another and then try to love them. His or her needy nature calls for our attention. We see their ache, but not our own. In fact, we dismiss our own cry for compassion as we project our pain outward, seeking to cure another instead of ourselves. Or, we may take a different tack to avoid recovery and try to seduce and manipulate love and attention out of others selfishly, because we are unable to give ourselves our own nurture.

It is important to remember that love becomes a manipulative bargaining chip when self-love is missing. When we can take ourselves into contact with our child within our own care, we can then truly begin to love our neighbours as ourselves.

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