For the longest time, I kept hearing these phrases: "love yoursef", "accept yourself". For the longest time they been puzzling, empty expressions that I couldn't grasp the full meaning of.

Now I understand that all these things we don't like about ourselves,
these angry reactions, being lazy, procrastinating, our addictions, vices etc.
These are the abandoned and suppressed parts of ourselves that are acting out, buried in the subconscious, the coping mechanisms created in our childhood.

It can only help to stop judging ourselves and our behaviours,
stop "fuck, what's wrong with me", "how could I do this again".
We will never integrate these parts if we keep repeating the behaviour that alienated and suppressed them in the first place.

That loss of our natural self, animal spontaneous self through "civilising" us by our parents (and them by their parents, and...) and effect of their own trauma on us.
The wisdom, intuition, knowing, feeling, being, we so struggle to achieve...

Unaccepted...

Suppressed, just to haunt us in adulthood,
as it is us now, turned against ourselves,
playing the role of the judge, the perpetrator, releasing the arrows...

So to accept ourselves means to acknowledge that all these behaviours,
everything we do not like in ourselves,
all we want to change, to be different and better...

All of it needs our compassion, our love, our smile and hug.
To be seen and heard by no one else but ourselves.
As it is nothing else but the essential part of ourselves,
without which we are forever bound to feel inadequate,
lacking, empty, guilty and powerless...