It’s often said that you can’t change other people, meaning you can’t force them to show up for themselves in the relationship. You can’t make them with through their shit. I believe this...

But I also believe that love is the only thing effective enough to motivate/drive someone to work through their issues.

No one wakes up one day and decides to work through their shit all by themselves. It’s the grief of love lost and/or the hope of a present love that gives them the fuel to grow towards wholeness.

I push back hard against folks who try to shame others into so-called “self love.” Cause I wanna know what self are you loving? And how do you know that self? How do you become aware of that self? Sitting at home journaling, reflecting, working through what...? RELATIONSHIPS!

Humans are more like cells in organs than they are individual self sustained autonomous beings. You take a single cell and it’s either gonna die or multiply.

Yet we create a multitude of expectations that people “love” themselves in isolation, don’t get attached to other people, and to not care about the opinions of other people.

Love isn’t optional. Love isn’t a reward. Love isn’t an individual obligation to self. You need love to survive. You’ll perish without it.

Like everything else in this capitalist racist misogynistic patriarchy, they tell you that your lack of love is your problem, and that no one can give it to you if you don’t first give it to yourself.

What kind of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps bullshit is that?

Rather than recognize + dismantle the systems and structures that disenfranchise us from our entitlement to love, we behave like children traumatized by neglect. We say we don’t need it and “I can just love myself.”

We got some healing to do, beloveds.

Neglect in kinship, community, romantic + sexual relationships, friendships, and society at large is all connected. We are neglected by our parents and we say “well, I turned out fine.” But then not only do you neglect your children and lovers and friends, you neglect yourself.

Even more, you tolerate neglect from the very people you pay to care for you and meet your needs. I’m talking about our elected officials.

Entire political doctrines and parties are founded on the principles of deserved neglect and irrational + self sufficiency. And we are clearly indoctrinated on every level. The evidence? At every turn we are taught that people and institutions should not be held accountable.

If you experienced child hood trauma, its direct material cause is capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, anti-Blackness, anti-lgbtq, and/or misogyny. Possibly all 7 at the same time or at various points. Cause? Structural. Solution? Relational. https://twitter.com/peoplesoracle/status/1318282223485898758

You can’t self-love yourself out of trauma rooted in homophobia/white supremacy/misogyny etc. Your self acceptance + freedom to be comes through relationships. Seeing yourself as whole through the eyes of another, someone who doesn’t think you’re too broken to love.

Do you believe that you are too broken to love or be loved? What makes you believe that there are prerequisites to being love? Who established them? Why?

Existing is the only possible prerequisite for loving and being loved. Everything else is lies. You don’t need to heal before you can love and be loved. Loving and being loved is what heals you.

Capitalism has turned love into the labor Olympics. But what if the only thing standing between you and loving and being loved was not work, labor, or “healing.” What if it was simply remembering.

You were born knowing how to love. It’s the remembering that’s difficult.

We give babies love freely. Babies we don’t even know. They are deserving of our smiles, our positive regard, and our attention without doing anything other than existing.

Who smiles at you freely, just seeing you lights up their face? Who regards you positively? Even when there are differences, they see you through the lens of grace... Who gives you attention for no reason other than that focusing on you gives them the opportunity to love?

There are no medals or prizes for withholding love from yourself. It may provide you social currency with those who also have succumbed to self neglect. https://twitter.com/peoplesoracle/status/1317116087952166913

Relationships are hard. But love? That’s easy.