~ UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ~
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The ultimate lesson all of us have to
learn is unconditional love, which
includes not only others but ourselves
as well.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
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I don't think I knew what unconditional
love was before I came into the program.
After all, I had always felt that my
mother had only loved and accepted me
conditionally, and that in order for me
to receive approval and love from her, I
had to be the best at everything I
did. I had to be at the top of the
class, win prizes for ballet and in
general be a credit to her, so that she
could bask in the reflected
limelight. Perhaps that was only my
perception. But as a result, I wrote a
script for myself that, in order to be
loved, accepted and loveable, I had to
excel at everything. I became an
overachiever academically, I had to be
the best wife, best mother, best cook,
in short, the best everything. No wonder
I had to eat to cope with all this
self-inflicted pressure.
The unconditional love and acceptance I
received when I first came into these
program rooms was something I had never
experienced before. "Let us love you
until you can learn to love yourself,"
they said. This was something totally
foreign to me. How could I be loveable
when I was fat and bloated? How could
they love me when I hated myself for all
the secret eating that caused me to feel
totally miserable? But love me they did,
and that was the beginning of my
healing. At one stage fairly early in my
recovery, one of my daughters accused me
of being so busy going to meetings and
doing courses and learning to love
myself, that I was too busy to love
them. How wrong she was! It was only
when I had learned enough self-love and
approval of myself, exactly as I was,
that I was able to love all my children
fully and unconditionally.
I am now able to love and accept all my
children exactly as they are. None of
them are perfect, as I am not, but they
are special in their own right, and I
love them for who they are and not for
anything they do or don't do.
ONE DAY AT A TIME . . .
I practice being warm and accepting of
all those I love, as I accept and love
myself for being who I am today -- a
child of God.