… A very long story.

I spent all my teenage years cultivating self-hate. Self-loathing was present in most of my actions, experiences and relationships. I just wasn’t good enough.This often showed up in my life as self-sabotage. In fact, I was a big disappointment to myself and unfortunately also to my parents. I had showed so much promise when I was a child, but all the promise had come to nothing by the time I was 14. Instead of going on being the beautiful and gifted child I had been, I became an ugly blob, incapable of living up to what was expected of me.

My parents were well-meaning people.Their disapproval only reflected their own disappointments in themselves and in their lives. My mother had been overweight as a child and as a teenager, so she was on a mission to ensure that my sister and I wouldn’t accumulate ANY bodyfat.

That we, my sister and I, shouldn’t suffer how she had suffered from being overweight and no doubt being called ugly names, was of overriding importance to her. She must have thought: “Anything but that!” In HER way, she wanted to protect us from what had hurt her in the past. Most people would agree that protecting their children is a parent’s duty and when you do it, you’re doing well.

My sister and I managed to keep off superfluous pounds, my sister all her life, and I till I hit puberty. Then the pounds started to pile on. There seemed to be nothing I could do about it. To my mother’s great chagrin, I was so not living up to her ideal, and as she told me: “If you keep putting on weight, people will think it’s MY fault.” I don’t know whose “fault” it was, but it didn’t make me feel very good about being me. Not only did I not live up to what magazines and the media expected of me, I made my mother feel ashamed. I was so unworthy… of love.

Please remember that my mother did not say this in an attempt to destroy me: she was speaking her heart and her despair at not having succeeded in bringing up both her girls to be the fine specimens she would have wanted. From hindsight, it’s easy to see that her comment reflected more on her, her fears and insecurities, than on me.

So my mother went on a new mission and that was to help me lose the extra pounds. I went on a diet that would last till I was 19. But I never lost an ounce. I started off with 1500 calories a day and when that proved ineffective, I went down to 900 calories. Still the pounds stayed where they were. I did about 90 minutes of sports every day, summer, winter, weekdays as well as weekends. With no result to show for it on the scales.

“What was missing,” you might wonder. So did I.

It wasn’t till I was in my twenties that I found out. The ingredient that had been missing was self-love. There was nothing I could do about my body weight, there was nothing I could do about not living up to my potential in many other areas of my life till the foundations we consolidated. Till the foundations of the edifice that I was were rock solid. And the foundations of any life on this earth is self-love.

We think: “If only I lose 20 pounds, I will be loveable.” But the truth is that once you find yourself loveable, you’ll lose the pounds. It’s the other way around. We’re looking for external signs that we’re loveable, such as a slim, gorgeous body, but no matter how many external signs we accumulate, power, wealth, prestige at work, healthy children, beautiful houses, fast cars etc, it won’t FEEL good till the essential piece that makes the whole thing come to life is there. This essential ingredient is self-love.

I’m sharing all this with you just to tell you that self-love is not the same as being selfish. Self-love sounds scary to some of us because it shifts the perspective from others on to ourselves. We don’t always feel worthy of this amount of attention, so we back away saying something like: “But I could never give myself this kind of importance.”

I beg to differ. Yes, you should! Maybe you’ve heard the expression: giving from an empty cup. How can you bestow love on others when you’ve got none for yourself?

Love is not a limited resource. It’s free and readily available. Why not bestow some on yourself? It doesn’t take any away from others.

This is really what this course is about: bestowing the love you need and deserve on yourself.

I can’t wait to see you there. Let’s do this together! 

Katrine