Just Breathe Confessionals

Self Love Is Complicated

• Just Breathe Confessionals • Season 1 • Episode 11

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What if the hardest part of healing isn’t leaving the past, but unlearning the voice it left behind? We open the most tender chapter of the Love series to explore how self-doubt takes root, why shrinking feels safe, and how to rebuild a self that no longer asks permission to exist. This is an honest look at body image after criticism, the quiet discipline of self-respect, and the relief of love that doesn’t require you to be less.

I share the moment I stopped being on my own side and the small habits that kept me there: apologizing for everything, editing my laugh, and choosing “easy” over honest. From there, we dig into the lingering effects of one comment about weight that rewired my relationship with my body. Instead of forcing confidence, I talk through learning to see my body as a record of survival—scars from surgery, a tiny mark in my eyebrow, stretch marks that arrived when life got heavy—and how those signs are proof of endurance, not flaws. We also unpack a healthier model of love: kindness that isn’t confusing, being seen without fear, and a partner who doesn’t fix you but stands beside you while you define yourself.

If you’ve ever tried to perform self-love and felt like a fraud, this conversation offers another path: self-love as discipline, a daily choice you make when no one’s cheering. You’ll hear practical reframes for catching old reflexes, turning down inherited voices, and choosing gentler language on hard days. We close the Love chapters not with perfection, but with a release—no more carrying old stories into new seasons. Subscribe, share with someone who needs softer self-talk today, and leave a review to tell me: what voice are you turning down next?

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to Just Breathe Confessionals. This is the episode I've been dreading the most since announcing that I was doing the love chapters. Not because I didn't want to talk about it, but because this part of the story is the hardest to speak about with full transparency. But I think it's necessary. Necessary because I have nieces who I always remind to love themselves fiercely, to trust their own voice, to know that their beauty isn't up for debate. And I work with high schoolers every single day, telling them the same thing, that their inner beauty is what matters, that they are enough, that they don't need to dim anything about themselves to make other people feel comfortable. But the truth is, I would be lying if I said I always believed that for myself. I'd be lying if I said I never go home, look in the mirror, and feel less than, not pretty enough, not lovable enough, not enough, period. And that's not me being dramatic or harsh. That's just the truth. Self-love is complicated. And sometimes the person I have the hardest time being kind to is me. When I look back now, I can see the exact moment I stopped being on my own side. Not a dramatic moment, just a slow shift, where I started believing I had to earn softness, earn affection, earn the right to take up space. It wasn't always someone else tearing me down. Sometimes it was me. The way I talked to myself in the mirror, the way I apologized for everything, even things I didn't do. The way I convinced myself that being the easy one made me more lovable. I started policing my own personality, shrinking myself before anyone else had the chance to, editing my laugh, my opinions, my wants, because I thought being less of me would make people stay. But self-love gets complicated when you've spent years training your brain to believe you're the problem. When you've lived so long in survival mode that even in healthy love, your instinct is still don't be too much, don't scare them, don't take up space. One gentle moment at a time. Here's the part people really don't warn you about. Even after you find healthier love, even after you start building yourself back up, the work doesn't stop. You don't magically wake up one day free from every insecurity or every old belief someone planted in you. You don't suddenly become this perfectly healed, perfectly confident version of yourself. It takes constant dedication to yourself. It takes waking up on the days when your inner critic is loud and choosing, again, to talk to yourself with kindness. It takes catching the moments when you slip into old patterns, when you apologize for things that aren't your fault, when you second guess your worth, when you dim yourself out of habit, and gently pulling yourself back. Even in healthier love, even when you're with someone who supports you, who doesn't ask you to shrink, who sees you clearly, you still have to choose to see yourself clearly too. Because no matter how good someone else is to you, they can't do the inner work for you. They can remind you of your worth, they can love you through your insecurities, but you still have to be the one to believe you deserve love. And learning not to be defined by anyone else, that's a lifelong lesson. It's choosing over and over again to anchor yourself in who you are and not who someone else told you to be. It's realizing that your identity doesn't belong to anyone but you, your beauty, your worth, your voice, your softness, your strength, your healing, none of that is something another person gets to control. Self-love isn't a destination. It's a practice, a commitment, a daily choice you make, even when it feels hard, even when you feel tired, even when those old stories try to come back. But every time you choose yourself, every time you refuse to shrink, every time you offer yourself compassion instead of criticism, you grow. You strengthen that muscle. You show the world and yourself that you are done living small. When I think about what I've struggled with the most, the biggest piece of my self-love journey has been my body. My weight has changed a lot over the years, from abuse, my severe depression, medications, from seasons of survival where my body was doing the best it could to keep me here. And when I was younger, I never thought about my weight in a negative way. I was athletic, I played sports, I moved freely in my body. It didn't pick myself apart in the mirror or analyze every angle in a photo. And when I got older, I still felt fine. I still felt like me. I still felt confident in who I was. But then I got into a relationship where someone looked me in the eye and told me that I was fat. And that that was the reason that he didn't want to have sex with me. That moment shifted something in me. Not because his words were true, but because I let them become louder than the voice I had already trusted inside myself. It led to unhealthy habits, unhealthy thinking, unhealthy coping. It made me disconnect from my body, like it was something I had to punish or shrink or control just to be loved. And the ironic thing, the painful, frustrating, heartbreaking thing, I loved my body back then, in the exact form he hated. I felt confident, I felt normal, I felt fine. But his voice was louder, and I let it become the one I believed. And ever since then, I haven't completely found my way back to loving my body again. I can love my heart, my soul, my spirit, my humor, my softness, but my body. That's the piece I'm still working on. And that's the part of self-love people don't always talk about. How one relationship, one comment, one season of your life can change the way you see yourself long, long after the person is gone. I'm still unlearning his voice. I'm still trying to turn up my own. I'm still reminding myself that my body has survived things that would have broken other people, that it has carried me through trauma, grief, anxiety, heartbreak, and healing. My body has never betrayed me. It has always been doing its best. I'm the one who had to learn to stop treating it like an enemy. One thing I'm learning is to look at my body for what it truly holds. Not what it looks like, not what someone once judged about it, but what the actual life it carries. Like when I look at my knee and I see the scars from surgery, a reminder of how strong I was when I had to rebuild myself from the ground up. A reminder of all the miles I ran playing soccer, all the games I pushed through, all the joys my legs carried me through long before anyone ever made me question my body, or the tiny scar in my eyebrow, the one from the impulse piercing I got after a breakup, when I felt lost, heartbroken, and needed to do something, anything, that reminded me I still had control over my own life. It's such a small scar. But every time I see it or feel it, I remember that version of me. The girl who was hurting, but still choosing herself in whatever way she could. And then there are the stretch marks in my stomach. The ones that showed up when my body decided it needed a little more room for stress, for survival, for the weight of what I was carrying emotionally long before it ever showed physically. They aren't flaws, they aren't failures, they're reminders that my body adapted when my life got heavy. Every mark, every scar, every line, every stretch, it's all evidence of a life that has been lived. A body that has been through things and kept going anyway. And the wildest part, these are the things I never judge on any other person. I see scars on someone else and think, wow, they survived something. I see stretch marks on someone else and think that's a real body, a beautiful body. But when it's mine, it becomes harder to show that same softness. So that's the work I'm doing now, learning to look at my own body with the same compassion I give so freely to others. Not forcing confidence, not pretending I love everything, just allowing myself to see the same story my body tells, and not shame myself for it. Something I never understood when I was younger was how different love feels when you're not afraid inside of it. I used to think love meant proving myself, earning my place, shrinking just enough to keep someone else comfortable. I didn't know there was a version of love where simply being myself could be enough. Being in a healthier relationship now has taught me something I didn't expect. Kindness isn't supposed to feel confusing. Being seen isn't supposed to feel scary. Love isn't supposed to feel conditional. And none of this means that my partner fixed me. He didn't he can't. That work is still mine. What he gives me is something quieter, something I didn't realize I needed. Space, patience, a love that doesn't make me shrink or hide my body or apologize for existing. And here's the most important part. I'm not letting his love replace my own voice. I'm not building my worth around how he sees me. I'm learning to let his love be a reminder, not a definition. Because healthy love doesn't define you. It supports you. It stands beside you while you learn to define yourself. I'm still doing the inner work. I still have days where I struggle, days where old voices get loud, days where my reflection feels unfamiliar. But now I'm in a place where love doesn't make those moments heavier. It makes them survivable. And maybe that's what growth looks like. Not perfection, but finally being in a space where you don't have to heal in fear. If you're listening to this and you've been through your own version of this story, I'm not here to tell you to love yourself. I'm not here to offer you some Pinterest quote or pretend that this work is easy. What I will tell you is that self-love isn't a personality trait. It's not something you wake up with like good hair or bad traffic. It's a discipline, a choice, a muscle you build in private when no one's cheering and no one's watching you try. And if you're anything like me, maybe you've had seasons where the person in the mirror felt like a stranger, not because you weren't trying, but because life happened. In a way your body had no choice but to carry. Maybe you're still angry about it, or confused by it, or embarrassed by it. Let me be the one to say this out loud. You don't have to pretend you're okay with everything. You don't have to fake confidence. You don't have to force some self-love era just to feel worthy of existing. What matters is that you're learning to show up for yourself now, even if it's messy, even if it's inconsistent, even if it looks like trying today and starting over tomorrow. That counts. That matters. That is enough. And if anyone ever made you feel small or unworthy or hard to love, that was about them, not you. Never you. You get to decide who you are now. You get to decide how you talk to yourself. You get to choose which voices stay, and which ones you finally stop carrying. And maybe you're not all the way there yet. That's fine. Most of us aren't. I sure as hell I'm not. What matters is that you're choosing yourself in ways you didn't before. Even if it's subtle, even if it's quiet, even if you're the only one who notices. That's the part people forget. Healing doesn't need an audience. It just needs you to keep going. So this is where the love chapters end. And closing them doesn't feel sad. It feels like a release. Like I finally said the things I've carried quietly for years and let them breathe in a way they never have before. These stories weren't just about the people I loved. They were about the versions of myself I lost, found, and grew into along the way. I talked about the love that broke me, the love that helped me heal, and the love I'm still learning to give myself. And here's what I know now. I don't have to shrink anymore. I don't have to apologize for existing. I don't have to carry old voices into new seasons of my life. I am building a self I'm proud of. One choice, one moment, one breath at a time. If you've been listening to these chapters and recognizing pieces of yourself in them, I hope you feel less alone. I hope you know that nothing you survived makes you unlovable. Nothing you walk through disqualifies you from softness or safety or joy. And you don't have to heal quietly either. You deserve to take up space in your own life again. Thank you for being here, for holding these stories with me, for breathing through the heavy and the gentle right alongside me. This chapter closes here, but the healing doesn't. The becoming doesn't. The softness you're learning, keep choosing it. Until next time, just breathe.