What It Means to Feel Safe Loving Yourself

The other morning I woke up working through a dream about one of my past relationships. I remember lying there wondering why these old pieces of my past were still popping up. It is so easy to slip into that place of why is this showing up, I already did the work on this. But as I sat with it, and as I thought about how I was responding even in my dream, I noticed I was different. I knew my boundaries. I acknowledged what I no longer wanted. And then something unexpected bubbled to the surface, a discovery that threw me off for a minute. I realized I was now in a place in my life where I felt safe in loving myself.

It’s funny, I didn’t quite know what that meant at first. To be honest, I had to do some digging to understand the deeper meaning behind it. The phrase sounds simple enough, but it carried a lifetime of truth inside it. It was something I had not understood for most of my life. Self love always felt like something I had to earn or grow into, and I often felt that way about giving love to others too. It felt fragile, like something I needed to protect, something that could be taken away if someone else did not approve of it.

 What I did not realize until recently is that loving myself has never been about becoming someone new. It has been about finally feeling safe with who I already am.

For so many of us, especially those who have found themselves living in survival mode, loving ourselves felt far too risky. Opening your heart to your own worth can feel like standing in a place with no armour on, and that kind of vulnerability is enough to make anyone want to run and hide. You worry that if you open yourself up, you will get hurt. If you stop judging yourself, you might let your guard down. You live in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But somewhere along the way, life brings you to this quiet moment where your soul whispers that it is safe to love yourself now. And that shift does not come all at once. It arrives in waves. Sometimes it is so subtle you hardly notice it. Other times it feels empowering and frightening at the same time, like a huge exhale you did not know you were holding in. But when it shows up, it becomes that defining moment when you can finally say to yourself, girl, I have got your back.

You start listening to your intuition more closely. You begin to recognize what feels right and what does not. You stop abandoning yourself when doubt shows up. And no, this does not make everything perfect. You are human. Triggers still come. Laughing, not laughing. But the beauty of finally feeling safe in loving yourself is that those triggers no longer control your thoughts. You question them now. You stay aware. You stay present.

You stop being at war with your own heart. You come home to yourself.

And maybe that is what self love really is. Not perfection, not confidence, not glowing all the time. Just safety. Just trust. Just the steady knowing that you can love who you are without bracing for impact.

From me to you, you are worth loving, especially by you.