On Self-Love and the Ability to Receive
You feel a little off, though you can’t quite explain why.
There are seasons in life when it’s not clarity we lack — it’s openness.
We want to know what’s next. We want guidance, reassurance, love, and direction. And yet, without realizing it, we remain closed. Guarded. Holding ourselves just far enough away from what we’re longing for.
This is where self-love is often misunderstood.
Self-love isn’t about confidence or self-admiration. It’s not about standing taller, speaking louder, or convincing yourself you’re worthy. In its truest form, self-love is much quieter than that.
Self-love is availability.
It’s the willingness to relax, to trust, to stop expecting the worst, and to open the door you’ve been holding shut, possibly for years.
So many women don’t struggle because love isn’t present in their lives. They struggle because they aren’t able to receive it. Not fully.
We question it, deflect it, and often minimize it. Instead, we stay vigilant. We stay capable, and we stay in control.
And slowly, subtly, we’ve closed ourselves off — not because we don’t want love, but because somewhere along the way, we’ve learned it wasn’t safe to fully open to it.
When we don’t love ourselves — not in words, but in practice — we become unavailable.
Unavailable to rest, to support, and to being held.
And yes… even unavailable to God’s love. This isn’t because God withholds. It’s because we do. We close the door ourselves. Often without even realizing it.
Self-love, in this sense, is not self-centered, it’s not indulgent, and it’s not something to earn or perform. It’s the quiet decision to stop standing in your own doorway.
To stop assuming you have to be better, clearer, more certain, or more faithful before you’re allowed to receive.
To trust that love — human and divine — does not require perfection. Only openness.
There’s a gentle but powerful shift that happens when a woman begins to practice self-love in this way. She stops striving to prove herself and starts allowing herself to be met for who she is, who she has become.
She listens instead of ignores. She rests instead of resists. She opens instead of closes. And in that openness, something changes.
Guidance becomes easier to hear. Support easier to accept. And, love — including God’s love — becomes something she can finally feel, not just believe in.
I don’t share this from a place of having it all figured out. I’m walking this path myself — learning, daily, how to trust more deeply, live more honestly, and step out of the way of what’s already being offered to me.
Self-love, I’m discovering, is not about becoming someone new. It’s about letting yourself receive what has been waiting patiently for you all along.
I’m learning that the door is not locked. It never was. And the key has always been in our hand.
