The Space Between Loathing & Love

I  see the body I’ve critiqued so often,
The parts I’ve wished away with silent scorn,
But now I pause, my heart begins to soften—
What if this critique was never born?

Self-love, I ponder, is it to embrace
Every curve, every line, every imperfection?
Or is it in this mirror’s harsh gaze,
A call to grow, to seek new direction?

I am not just flesh that fills this frame,
But a collection of moments, choices, scars.
To love myself means to claim
The journey of who I am, not just what mars.

It’s not in passive acquiescence
That love for self truly resides,
But in the honest acknowledgment
Of what I wish to change, what I decide.

Today, I looked in the mirror
and saw the war I have waged against myself.
I pulled at my belly, measured my worth in inches,
heard the voice that weighs me in value
before I’ve even stepped on a scale.
And in that moment, I did not feel love.
I felt doubt, frustration, the sting of old wounds.

But love—real love—is not the absence of doubt.
It is the courage to stand in the mirror,
to see the parts I wish were different,
and instead of tearing them down,
ask: What do you need from me today?
Not punishment. Not shame. Not a lie.
But a quiet, honest kind of care.

Love is not blind acceptance,
nor is it endless war.
It is knowing I am at once
a work in progress
and already worthy of kindness.
That I can strive for change
without believing I am unlovable as I am.

Perhaps love lies in the honest admission
That not all parts of me are loved or known.
But in this confession, there’s a mission—
To nurture, to change, to make my own.

There’s an ache, a deep, resounding cry
For the love I have withheld from me,
To look beyond the critical eye
And see the beauty in my being.

In this mirror, my tears now fall
For every moment I’ve denied
The love that should have nurtured me,
Not twisted into the shape of my own enemy.

Self-love is an ocean’s depth,
A tide that shifts from light to dark,
Where I learn to love with every breath—
To heal, to mend, to leave a mark.

So how do I teach my daughter self-love?
I start with truth.
I let her see me on the hard days,
but I show her how I choose to care anyway.
I teach her that love is in the trying—
not in perfection, not in pretending,
but in showing up for yourself,
even when the mirror whispers otherwise.

I must let her see me fight for myself,
not with clenched fists and loathing,
but with the steady hands of a woman
who is learning to treat herself as someone worth protecting.
Let her see me struggle,
but let her also see me choose,
again and again,
to be kind to the person in the mirror.