Learning To Love Myself by Leora West

You have been strong for so long that you may have forgotten what it feels like to be cared for by the one person who has been with you through everything: yourself. There was a time when you knew what you wanted. You knew what made you happy. You could hear your own voice beneath the noise of everyone else's expectations. Then life happened. You loved. You lost. You stayed longer than you should have. You gave chances. You swallowed words. You questioned yourself. You carried pain that was never yours and kept hoping that someone would finally give you the love, understanding, or apology you were waiting for. And somewhere along the way, you began leaving yourself behind. Learning To Love Myself is a collection of poems and reflections for the moment you realize you cannot keep abandoning yourself just to hold on to what is hurting you. These pages walk beside you through the ache of losing yourself, the courage of letting go, and the tenderness of finding your way back. They remind you that you are allowed to leave. That you do not have to earn love. That your feelings need no permission. That wanting more does not make you ungrateful. And that some endings may never make perfect sense, yet you can still move forward. There is a life beyond the person you lost. There is a voice beneath the silence. There is joy beyond the season that broke you. And there is a version of you waiting to be met—not the person you were before everything changed, but the person you can become when you finally stop living for approval and start living from the truth of who you are. Read these words when you need to release something, when you miss someone, when you doubt yourself, or when you are ready to begin again. You were never too much to love. You were never required to become less. You were never meant to lose yourself in order to be chosen. Sometimes, the deepest act of healing is becoming someone who will never leave you again.