Look Within: It All Begins With Love

So many of us get to midlife exhausted. We’re being pulled in all directions, we’ve got children at home or university, we have ageing parents we long to care for, our relationship with our husband or partner isn’t getting the attention it deserves…the alarm goes off in the morning at we drag ourselves out of bed exhausted from sweating all night and lack of sleep…

Yeah, it’s tough.

The one person what needs our attention the most is the one whose needs are usually right at the bottom of the list.

It’s time to lean into love my lovely. Now more than ever is the time to allow yourself to feel some love for yourself. My favourite poet Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Wild Geese, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Ease yourself into tenderness for yourself. A friend said to me recently, “take exquisite care of yourself”, I loved this, it was said with such deep love and sincerity. And I urge you to do the same. It reminded me of the care we might take of a beautiful orchid we’re nurturing, or the delicate hand washing of a cashmere sweater or the way we play with a puppy. Gentleness. Calm. Serene. That is how we look after ourselves.

I promise you this, once you begin to treat yourself with this kind of love and gentleness everything on the outside becomes easier. Everything. Let the feeling be your guide always.

Once we come home to this gentle loving place we see our lives differently. We notice that things on the outside don’t seem so oppressive. We notice more what’s right and beautiful in our lives and are much more at ease and able to be guided by our wisdom in what we see as not working.

Look within my lovely: It all begins with love. Love is all there is.