Sometimes to get to this place, it requires digging deep into the uncomfortable and Suppressed parts of yourself. Facing your Shadow, healing your shadow and those suppressed parts of yourself. I never really realized until this year how suppressed emotions get stored in the body. They get trapped there when we push them down and can stay stuck in the body for years and years. They don’t disappear, they manifest themselves as mental illness, anger issues, unfavorable personality traits and behaviors that stem from unhealed things.

It could be things you haven’t thought about in years, things you’ve moved on from and forgot about but at the time didn’t allow yourself to feel what you needed to. But what I have learned,  is that part of the self love journey is about going back to those painful memories, back to those moments those emotions were suppressed, becoming conscious of the unconscious and bringing to the surface the things your subconscious has tried to block out as a defense mechanism. It’s loving yourself enough to allow yourself to feel the things you didn’t allow yourself to feel before, no matter how long ago it was. Facing your shadow, healing your shadow, integrating your shadow, is a very important part of self care and self love.