How to really love yourself:

Tie an anchor to your ankle. Wade out. Keep wading. Let the metal scrape rock bottom. Keep going. Learn to breathe underwater.

Tell your secrets. The ones that ache the most. Spread them out like cracked open seeds in springtime. Plant them all under your favorite tree. The one that reaches for afternoon sun.

Solve a mystery. Don’t tell anyone.

Stare at your eyes in a mirror for 11 minutes without blinking.

Add up all the times you’ve said “I’m sorry” and meant it. Buy yourself a rose for each one.

Bend time. Hold five year old you in your arms. Tell him/her what you wish someone would have. “You are forgiven.” “You deserve support.” “You are love.” Then go repeat those words to a stranger, no explanation given. Walk away.

Let someone tickle you until you cry. Switch positions.

Lay down in a field at night alone. Let the stars teach you their names. Their old names. Invite each one to become a cell in your body. Shine like the beauty you are.

Let someone hear your true name. Whisper it. Coyly if needed. But speak it. Not your given name or one shoved forward for you to ingest, but a name chosen from soul-hunger. Let someone learn your name. Let them sing it over you when you’ve forgotten.

Sing your own name when you have forgotten. Let the stars, the trees, the earth sing your name. And here’s the real work: Listen.

Go out into the boundaries of the night where you have never gone, where the Soul has hidden things it hopes no one will ever find. Sit down with this pile in the dark. Weep.

Worship the sun. Worship the moon. Tend to something whole-heartedly that is both outside of yourself, and exactly what you are made of.

Listen to snow fall.