"You are the one you’ve been waiting for.” – Richard C. Schwartz

It’s my birthday today. 37 years old. I’m not going to lie, that number feels old to me. Perhaps mostly in that as the years pass, so too does the need to reflect on how we are spending these moments.

I saw my own therapist this week too. For the record (and this is a little off topic), I think all people should have a therapist. I genuinely believe the world would be a better place if we all had someone to help us sort through the baggage we collect along our journey. Anyhow, back to my point: I seem to be stumbling over a repetitive emotional pattern that’s left me feeling quite exasperated. I mean seriously, I’m a freakin’ counsellor myself, what am I not getting?

After describing this pattern to my guy, he said something like this: “Christina, you are one of the most intelligent people I know. You get the concepts, you’ve fully grasped all aspects of the issue, you understand how to do the work, but you are missing the key ingredient: love.”

Love. My word. The moment that sentence left his mouth I knew this man-therapist-teacher-wise- human-angel just named my block.

Love. I know how to love my children, and my husband, and my friends, and family, and even my clients (in a professional kind of way). I love people and the human experience- all of our resiliencies and strengths and flaws. But myself? He was right; love for myself has always been conditional. Only when I am perfect, and serene, and my house is clean, and I have slept well and ate well and exercised, and my work is organized, and I have been supermom do I allow myself a moment of self-love. I probably meet these conditions about 3 percent of my life. I don’t think I’m alone in this, being raised up as a woman in a culture of performance + appearance = self-worth.

He then said something to me that resonated truer than most anything I have experienced in my life: You’re 37 years old. It’s time to love yourself differently. It is time.

And so, on this birthday I am gifting myself a “Call to Love,” and I’m inviting you to join me in this. Because although there is a movement in society to love the lumps and bumps and wrinkles of our physical bodies, I’m not sure I have heard so much about the lumps and bumps of our inner landscape.

So here it is, a Call to Love:

(Please feel free to insert your own parts and pro-nouns, although I suspect you’ll hear some overlap)

I vow to love all the parts of me. The dark crevice’s and the light combined. To love anger for its hard work standing up for me. For sadness, that allows space to grieve and heal. For the critic, who believes so desperately she is needed to keep me motivated. For the people pleaser, who is working hard to ensure I am good enough. For the workaholic, ensuring my family is supported and safe. For the worry, that tries to protect me from bad things happening. For procrastination and all the ways I shut down when the world is too much. For control, who is ultimately just very scared. For shame, that hurts me before others can. I vow to shower myself with compassion, generosity, grace, kindness and forgiveness, because each of these parts are a part of me, and they are welcome. They are worthy of love. I will love them all like a fierce mamma bear, because that is how I know how to love.

If loving all these parts seems counterintuitive to you, I encourage you to consider the alternative, which usually looks like hating, shaming, stuffing, or avoiding these parts. In my experience, hurt begets more hurt, and no solution to living fully and with joy exists there. The irony of loving these parts also rests in this truth: the more we love them, the less they overwhelm us.

So happy birthday to me, and may my gift to myself be also a gift to you.

Today, I wish you nothing but…. you guessed it… great big enormous LOVE,

Christina