A Gift of Self-Love

This week’s blog is an extract from Resolve, Chapter 11, The Gift of Self-Love (pp. 223 to 227).

I don’t often share an extract. However, I feel others need this gift of self-love now, so I won’t leave it hidden away in the book.

My psychologist, Rose, and I had talked deeply about the newness of my realisation of my abandonment, as well as attachment and detachment. I had to accept that this work was not about quick fixes. I couldn’t control what others would say or do. They would do whatever they wanted to – without forewarning.

Rose gave me a one-page ‘law of detachment’ statement, including instructions to follow, reinforcing that it would take time.

Saltwater and my attachment releasing visualisation

I left the therapy session with the printed page in one hand and the idea of sourcing a spiritual healer or some healing process to help me disentangle myself.

At yoga class that night, the teacher taught us poses specifically aimed at helping us open up and release our trauma. It was soothing; I felt something moving inside me, and I slept restlessly.

The following day, I tuned into a morning meditation hypnosis titled ‘Letting go of the past and negative emotions’. Tears rolled off the side of my face and onto my pillow. They didn’t stop.

I got out of bed and found Troy downstairs, asking him if he’d like to come with me to the ocean before he went to work. I knew intuitively I needed the healing power of saltwater. We arrived at sunrise, and I floated quietly in the gentle swell. As we sat for a takeaway coffee on a park bench afterwards, the tears floated to the surface again and poured down my face. Troy eventually suggested we return to the car. I couldn’t stop the flow, and my tissues had become small sodden balls. I had nowhere to look to avoid the prying, curious eyes of the early-bird locals as they walked past.

Back in the car, I blurted out all my feelings about the hurt of abandonment and the confusion around attachment and detachment. As saltwater is healing for me, I realised I needed to find my own ritual to release what I was experiencing. Strangely enough, I knew exactly what I needed that ceremony to include, or the first few steps of it anyway.

The Ceremony

I booked myself an hour in the saltwater float pool of a local spa. Before I left home, I read through Rose’s law of detachment sheet and journalled everything I could until my pen ran out of words. I padded along the paths I knew at the spa, almost like that walk was part of the ritual. The attendant led me into the warm float pool room and set the door signs as occupied. I put in my earplugs to block the water and used the timed three minutes until the ceiling of twinkling lights would fade to darkness to lay down on my back in the shallow water, floating fully stretched out, with my hands open, facing upward, ready to receive. I closed my eyes as the lights went out completely, for the hour that was my time to use just for me.

The Visualisation Practice

Drawing on a visualisation practice, I vaguely recalled listening to years ago, I pictured myself as a sovereign. I was seated on a large stone bench looking across the bountiful gardens of my personal realm. The gardens spread out into the distance, with the most beautiful glittering mosaiced walls, and the gates and a moat down at the far bottom left corner of the garden. On the stone terrace to the right where I was seated, Troy, my daughters, loved ones, and friends were laughing, setting a long table for a celebratory evening feast. There was a hearth with a fire burning over in that direction.

My personal realm was full of heart, soul, music, art, beautiful colourful fabrics, and flowers—all good, creative and loving elements filled the space. This realm was my life. I wasn’t renting it from anyone. I could pour into it whatever I chose and leave out of it anything that no longer served me.

Attachment

As the sovereign, I visualised my heart beating. I thought about the list of all the people in my life who were entangled, via red ribbons, around my heart. I’d written that list down in my journal at home. I knew it was healthy to include all relationships, including Troy, and anyone’s name who came up, be it close or extended family, people I used to work with, or had met overseas. If a name popped up, it was added to the list.

The point of the exercise is that no one should be entangled tightly around anyone else’s heart. We love, give and grow beside each other. It doesn’t serve us to twist ourselves up with each other to make one entangled mess.

Releasing Attachment

I took a deep breath in through my nose, and breathing out, I inserted the list of people’s names into the two spaces of the following statement:

‘I fully and freely forgive and release [names] and let them go to their own and best happiness, and [names] fully and freely forgive and release me and let me go to my own and best happiness’.

Repeating the statement four more times in my mind, one by one, I could see the red ribbons loosen and fall away from my heart with every slow breath in and out. Released, everyone from the list drifted out to the distant gardens, happily chatting away amongst themselves. They did so aware that they were all welcome and loved inside the walls of my personal realm, my life, if love-based emotions such as compassion, integrity, kindness and openness were respected.

The realm’s guards collected all the untethered ribbons and placed them in a basket beside the fireplace. I decided I needed to rest and enjoy the beautiful surroundings of what was present in my life for a moment. I floated without thought for a while in the salty pool, replenishing my energy just for me.

The sovereign, re-energised, stood by the fire and tipped the loose ribbons in, watching them disintegrate into ash. If any of those ribbons had been secretly concealing psychic daggers that Rose and I had spoken of in an earlier session, I didn’t want any of those within the gardens of my life at risk of piercing my heart. I felt my strength increasing and my heart opening, free. I looked up and smiled at those now meandering back up from the gardens with the sun setting behind them to be seated at my table.

Creativity and Childhood Joy Merged

The realm was now floating on fluffy white clouds, one of the clouds that sat above the ‘Magic Faraway Tree’ that Young Alice had cherished the stories of and I’d read to each of our girls over and over when they were little.

I invited Young Alice and all the magical folk she loved to join us at the celebration. The realm and the table we would be seated at were safe, loving and full of joy, laughter and hope. I hugged her, and she felt safe now to trust and embrace me. She knew she was safe. My life was a sanctuary and I wasn’t going to compromise her or me again.

Bombs Away

I got up from the pool at the end of that hour, feeling like I’d rested for a day. The words ‘bombs away’ came to me as I lifted my first foot from the water onto the dry sandstone. How odd, I thought. Is that the title of the book? At that stage, I was still working on the title of this book, the manuscript currently being titled Awkward Silence. I intuitively knew that it was temporarily holding the title space, waiting for the real title to surface. ‘Bombs Away? Was that it? I couldn’t be sure.

I walked quietly back to my car. Before heading up the long, tree-lined driveway to head home, I switched on my streaming service. I found the band Sheppard’s playlist to put on the song ‘Geronimo’, which had ‘bombs away’ in the lyrics. The playlist defaulted to another song, ‘Find Someone’ which I’d never heard before, also by Sheppard. As I listened to the lyrics, I started to laugh. It was a sign! I laughed and smiled, then played it on repeat for the fifteen-minute drive home.

The Ceremony Was Complete

The realisation was clear:

I only needed to look inside myself and be the person who loves me the most. Begin there with self-love, kindness, and self-respect.

It was a theme song for that day, not beyond, but it was a theme song nonetheless!

I felt lighter, quieter, and more peaceful, and my mind felt crystal clear. Rose and I spoke to debrief over the phone, and she recommended that kind of release requires rest afterwards. My old me would have just moved on with what was next. I heeded that advice and rested as prescribed.

I felt peace and contentment in a way I’d never felt before. It was so simple a practice to gift myself healthy, happy boundaries with a hell of a lot of love, joy, and creativity wrapped up in them.

Shared with love,

Alice Perle

My blog is published weekly at www.aliceperle.com.au/blog, and you may subscribe to receive the weekly article directly in your inbox.