To my dearest me,

I love you and I want to take some time in this letter to tell you what I love about you!

When I look back at you from the future - a month from now, maybe a year from now, the woman that I see is someone who cares about others so deeply, so open heartedly, with so much love. But she fails to show this same care for herself.

I want you to know what I love about you because you need to read this and hear this as often as possible, you need to know that you are a special, wonderful, beautiful soul, despite all the hurt and the harm and the chaos that you experience, despite the lack of reciprocity in a language that you understand. You are ok despite how not-ok everyone is around you.

Your desire to help others to be ok is something that I love about you - my wish for you though is that you give as much to yourself as you give to others. You are at risk of depleting yourself again - and when you deplete yourself, when you empty your bucket of sparkles onto others, you leave nothing for yourself, and in a strange way you leave nothing for others either.

You always start out well - with an open heart, with a loving heart, with a strong heart and no expectations on others to do anything other than receive your love and care. But over time, and quite naturally an expectation develops in you that others will reciprocate in a way that you recognise.

Perhaps they are reciprocating in their own way and its just unrecognisable to you. And perhaps they are not reciprocating at all - it's so hard for you to differentiate isn't it? And instead of becoming discerning and reserving some of yourself for you, you start to throw more of yourself, more of your love, more of your resources at others, now in the hope that they will return your energy, return your love. I sometimes wonder is it truly love - or is it manipulation? Is it possible for you to just give, without any expectation of receiving? Is it even fair to expect that, to be asking that?

I want to encourage you to love yourself more, to see yourself more, to uphold yourself more. If you invested the same amount of energy in yourself as you did in others, I can only imagine how fulfilled you would feel. It's not selfish to be investing in yourself. It's self care, it's self love. It's crucial. Because to be honest my love, you are the only person who can look after you. You cannot expect anyone else to do that job - that's your job.

I think you assume that because you do so much looking after others, that the same should be done for you. But the reality is you need to stop doing so much looking after others - it's not your job! Let me say that again with an enormous amount of love - it's not your job to look after others. You are not the care giver of any of these people - they are not your children. They are your clients, they are your friends, they are your acquaintances. Some of them are your lovers. And still, it's not your job to take care of any of them.

The most loving thing you can do right now is not to disconnect - I know you want to go dark, you want to withhold your care completely - that's not good for you either. The most loving thing is for you to find a middle ground - find a way to express your needs, be comfortable with the fact that many people will not be able to meet your needs, or even meet you half way, and know that this does not diminish the value of your needs or your value. At all.

My wish for you is that you give yourself more time - it's the greatest gift you can give yourself. Give yourself as much time as you collectively give others - yes that might mean reducing the amount of time you give to others. That's ok! Love yourself. Love you. Love you first.

I can feel your resistance to this idea of loving yourself - loving yourself now. Perhaps a better way to engage with this is to love your future self, to love me, to love me - your future self - enough to invest in your self today. As your future self, I know you have an immense capacity to love - and I know you are worthy, more than worthy, of receiving that love.

I love you. I love every aspect of you. I love your heart, your ability to nurture and care. And in my love for you, I implore you to love yourself, even if it requires you to only love yourself just 1% more than you currently do. Love yourself enough to breath, to rest, to explore your boundaries, to establish boundaries, to communicate and enforce boundaries, to say no to others more often, to say yes to yourself everyday!

With self love, everything else falls into place. So much of what worries you becomes less important, some of it becomes of absolutely no importance. With self love, you step into a sense of fulfilment, of ease, of peace, of calm. With self love you step into becoming you!

I love you! You can love you too.

With hugs,
Your future self.