If You Don't Love Yourself Before, You Won't Love Yourself After

I really love the new Spark People Healthy Inspiration section. I guess that I am one of those people who respond really well to motivational quotes and visual images and this section is full of them. I'm choosing one a week and making it my motivator for the week. From now on, I think I'll start adding it to my Spark page and sharing what it means and why it is important to me for the week.

While I was scrolling through the Healthy Inspirations, I ran in to the one that is the title of this blog - "If you don't love yourself before, you won't love yourself after." I take exception to this quote and I think it is demotivating for many, many Spark people.

Since I have been on Spark, I have shared with you some of the horrors of my past: childhood abuse and neglect, the loss of my childhood to a parent's alcoholism, rape and my subsequent path to a happy, long term marriage of 37 years, our raising of a lovely, giving, successful only child, financial security. I shared that psychotherapy and faith helped me find my way out of the darkness. In sharing this, I have heard from more Spark members with similar stories than I can count.

There are Spark people with darker stories than mine, stories of adults who struggle every day with the horrors perpetuated against them by parents, lovers, spouses, even their own children, Spark People who have no self esteem, no reason to believe, and little energy to continue. These people didn't seem to have any reason to believe that they would ever be successful. Most of them are hiding in grossly fat bodies because they believe that they are safe there - safe if they are fat, undesirable, ugly. They are hiding is fat bodies because they don't believe that they deserve to look good, that they can never look good, feel good, be healthy or reach their goal. They stay on Spark because on Spark, they can still see a glimmer of hope. On Spark, they have a community that encourages them to try, that tells them that they do deserve it and that they can have it. They see people like themselves who do make it, using the tools that Spark offers to all of us for free.

The Healthy Inspiration quote that "If you don't love yourself before, you won't love yourself after" wasn't wrong, it was just incomplete. I want you to believe in yourself, as I believe in myself. I want you to succeed, not just at losing weight and gaining health but at something much, much more important. I want you to succeed at learning to love yourself, value yourself, believe in yourself. Here's the new inspirational quote - the right quote to help you on your journey.

If you don't love yourself before, YOU CAN LEARN TO LOVE YOURSELF DURING THE JOURNEY, and you WILL love yourself after. We're all here to help.