Self-Love

It has been a pattern of mine when life gets tough to slink into a bookstore and find something inspirational to read.

I remember such a time in Sydney Australia about 22 years ago. I had left my two little kids at the brand new Occasional Child-care Centre for my weekly 3 hours of me time. The rosy cheeked director Maggie Currie hugged me and said, "You're precious!" No one had ever called me that in my entire life. Me precious? Me as a mother was precious? It was difficult for me to get my head around that. This was Scottish Maggie's great gift to all us young mothers.

I had been conflicted about my worth. Should I go back to work or stay home with my children? After 20 years of feminism it felt somehow wrong to even want to be a stay-at-home mother. Women had fought long and hard, I had worked hard in my profession as a Science teacher and what was where I expected my status to come from as a woman not from being a stay at home mother. And what about the financial aspect. Didn't we need two incomes to live in our sophisticated world?

I found myself in the Crowsnest bookstore opposite the metal sculpture of a Crowsnest in the little square of the municipal buildings. My eyes roamed the crowded shelves. It was the book "You can heal your life" by Louise Hay that jumped off the shelve demanding to be purchased. I loved the rainbow heart on the white cover. I wasn't quite sure why my life needed healed. It was her words at the beginning of each chapter that caught my attention, "Deep at the centre you my being is an infinite supply of love....."

Thankfully that book revolutionised my life.