Being loved is the ultimate visibility

We all want to be loved. We are human and being loved is a basic need in all of us. Even the wounded, the scarred and the scared. We want to be loved.

Being loved is the ultimate visibility.

When we are loved, as we are, in our full being, we feel incredibly powerful. When we crave for being loved, we don't know that we want the visibility that comes with that. We only recognise that powerful feeling of being safe in being seen and heard when we are being loved.

But ...

what happens when we're not? When we don't feel safe to be fully visible as ourselves. When we filter what we say, how we behave, who we are?

I see this all the time in the women I work with.

They have been feeling so unsafe in unfolding who they are that they have lost their identity completely.

This isn't just about being safe and loved in romantic relationships. It starts way before. When we are little girls.

We are being told we're too

• loud
• fat
• thin
• smart
• ambitious
• and all the things.

And we need to not be like that. We need to display certain attributes and not others to be accepted and included. And in many cases, loved.

Ironic, because when what is demanded of you is to suppress who you are and take on traits that are not you to be loved, it's not love. It's an abuse of power.

As little girls, we take on this programming because we recognise that it creates a safe environment. We won't get yelled at if we just do all things right. We won't get shamed if we just wear the right clothes and have the right body shape. But most of all, we will be loved if we do everything just so, as we were taught.

The expression of our soul, that beautiful, amazing thing that shines through anything, even from the darkest of places is underneath all that fear.

Your true representation of who you are, in all aspects of you, the light and the dark cannot be extinguished only dimmed by fear of being unloved.

But I'm too scared to unleash who I really am because the people I love will stop loving me.

I hear you, loud and clear. I had the same fear too. In fact, sometimes, it still rears its ugly head.

When you censor yourself constantly and you spend huge amounts of energy being something you're not, your body and your mind will pay the price, eventually.

Start with self-love.

We have this false belief that we are only worth loving ourselves when others love us first. It's actually the other way around.

We need to love ourselves first. Own who we are first.

The light and the dark. Because we are human beings and by the very nature of being human, we are a mixture of light and dark. There is no perfect ratio that makes the perfect human.

When you fully integrate all parts of yourself you won't need someone else's love to validate you. And when you don't need someone else to validate you, you reach your most powerful state of being.

No more fear of not being loved for who you are in your entirety. No more investing huge amounts of energy to please and avoid causing discomfort to others.

When you draw your power from being fully and completely you, you make your decisions from that powerful position. You're no longer at the mercy of all the messaging out there in the world that relies on you being scared, alone and powerless.

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I used to feel a knot in my stomach when someone spoke about power. I’d dismiss anyone talking about “the power within” and all that stuff. I believed that it was for others. It wasn’t for me.

Where did that belief come from? For a long time, I didn’t know. I didn’t even know I needed to ask that question to work on being seen and heard.

I’m not powerful.

I don’t deserve to be powerful.

I can’t be trusted with power.

These are all things we believe because we have been conditioned that way.

Once you find the source of those beliefs, you start asking new questions.

Why can’t I be as powerful as anyone else?

Who did it serve to make me believe I’m powerless?

When and where did I accepted that belief that I don’t deserve to feel powerful?

Becoming aware of the stories that run in the back of your mind and influence your choices about visibility will put you on a path of discovering where your beliefs about your unworthiness to be seen and heard come from.