When Self Love Feels Far Away

Self-love podcast episode about feeling worthy of love, healing your relationship with your body, and using gentle affirmations to remember you are enough right now. In this episode of Ava's Joi, Ava gets honest about emotional eating, weight gain, and the messy in‑between seasons where you don’t recognize yourself, then guides you through grounding breathwork and soothing “I am” affirmations to help you feel safe in your own skin again. You’ll learn how to move from self-judgment to softer acceptance, practice simple self-love affirmations you can repeat daily, and leave with one tiny, doable way to start rewriting the script of your life with more compassion and worthiness.

Transcript

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Hello my loves. Welcome back to Ava's Joy. My joy is creating affirmations. My joy is creating my life as I want it to unfold. My joy is being the script writer for my life, and I'm going to help you do the same. Today we're talking about something that sounds cute on Instagram but feels really messy in real life. Loving yourself. When loving yourself actually feels hard. When self-love feels far away. I'm gonna be honest with you. I have started and stopped this whole affirmation journey more times than I can count. It did not come out of me waking up one day feeling like a baddie, fully healed, self-love on ten. It came from seasons where I felt broken, numb, and like I was watching my life from outside my own body. There were stretches where I was eating my feelings instead of feeling them. Food was comfort, distraction, escape, and of course my body changed. I gained weight, and then it stopped being just about the number on the scale and started to feel like something is wrong with me. I am wrong. I didn't recognize myself in photos, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror, and honestly, I didn't recognize myself in my own skin. Now, as my body has been changing again, there's this weird in-between space. I'm not who I was, I'm not yet who I'm becoming, and my relationship with my body hasn't caught up. So if you've ever looked at yourself and thought, why is it so hard to love me? Or am I even worthy of the kind of love I want? This episode is for you. This is us healing out loud together. Ground your body. Alright, let me get serious and get ready. Wherever you are, if it's safe, just pause for a second. Uncross your legs if you can. Let your shoulders drop. Take a slow breath in through your nose. One, two, three, hold it at the top, and exhale softly out of your mouth. Again, in through your nose and out. Now do my favorite quick body check. Notice your jaw, unclench it. Notice your shoulders. Let them melt down. And you already know, unclench your butt cheeks. Yes, you, I see you. Feel the chair or the bed or the floor supporting you. You are held right now. Now that we're here, present, breathing, held, let's talk about what it really means to love yourself when it doesn't come easy. Because here's the truth self-love isn't a vibe, it's a practice. Not a destination, but devotion. So when people say, you just have to love yourself first, that sounds nice. But what if you don't even know how to start? What if self-love doesn't feel like a big wave of confidence, but a whisper that says, I'm trying? That's where I was. Not in self-hate, but in self-discomfort. I didn't hate me. I just didn't feel safe being me. And that's a big difference. Self-love for me started as neutrality. It was looking in the mirror and saying, This is my face today. These are my arms. This is my stomach. Period. No judgment, no apology. When you've spent years believing that love is something you earn by being smaller, quieter, or more put together, it feels radical to say, I deserve love right now. And if that feels too big to believe today, that's okay. You don't have to rush to love yourself. You can start with soft acceptance. Acceptance says, I'm allowed to exist as I am. Compassion says, I see that I'm trying. And maybe love, real love, is built one gentle moment at a time from those two truths. So as you listen today, I want you to think of one thing, just one, that your body or your heart did for you today. Maybe you got out of bed when that felt hard. Maybe you texted a friend back. Maybe you simply showed up here, right now. That's proof that you're learning to love you, even when it still feels complicated. Let's build from there. Alright, let's seal this in with some affirmations. You can say them out loud if you can, or just whisper them inside your mind. Take another breath in through your nose and let it go. Now, repeat after me slowly. I am allowed to take up space. I am not behind in my healing. My worth is not determined by my productivity, my appearance, or my past. My body is not my enemy. My body is my home. I am learning to love myself in real time, not just the after version of me. Even when it feels hard to love me, I can still choose softness. I am safe to be who I am right now. Take one more deep breath. Feel that truth settle in your chest. Feel how your body slightly expands when you give yourself permission to be loved. Not later, not once you fix everything, but now. You don't have to have it all together to be deserving. You don't have to feel happy all the time to be lovable. What makes you worthy is that you're you.