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"The giving of love is an education in itself." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks to Louise L. Hay, I can tell myself, "I love you, Sheela," and not flinch. Too much. In the beginning, I looked into my own eyes staring back at me from the mirror, and I literally felt the self hate coming toward me. I had to sit down and consider just why I hated myself so?

But after telling myself "I love you, Sheela. I really do," those feelings have shifted, evaporated, and are not the ocean they once were, but instead a lake, a manageable lake, being drained.

Being able to give love to one's self is as good as it gets. If you aren't in love with yourself, you won't be able to love anyone else. Now that I can see myself as a loving person, other changes have begun. I am giving on several levels and letting go of the terror of fear and worry. Even as I just typed those words, I found myself starting to chew on a fingernail (or what is left of one).

It goes deep this notion of self hatred.

"It's all about love," my father told me the morning after he passed. So why should I separate myself from love and enter into the land of fear, so far from the light and depth of love?

It seems to be an Earthly problem. I read that we leave stress when we die. Time to die now. Time to live because I do love you, Sheela. I really do.

Giving me this, I know I will succeed and give back.

Yesterday during one of my Memoir workshops, a writer's husband walked in and we convinced him to stay and to participate. He oozed gentleness and good energy. And because there was a new writer in the group in addition to him, I asked everyone to introduce themselves. When it was the husband's turn, he told us of being the first born child to his parents who then divorced when he was three. He went to live with his mother, he said, who married a man who was poor. As a couple, his mother and this new man proceeded to have half a dozen children. I watched this lovely man's face turn somber as he looked at the table. He was not thin, nor overweight; he was just right with a round face, bald head, and enormous smile. But we could tell his story was a troubled one. "I was skin and bones," he said, "and always hungry."

But by 12, his father, he told us, had found him, and was able to convince him to return with him and to live with them as he had just remarried. And he did and grew healthier and found himself interested in school and subjects such as history, social studies, and more. But he said what he learned the most was that in those dark years he was blessed by girls, girls who noticed he didn't pull their hair to get their attention, and so they invited him home to eat dinners with them, and there he would walk into rooms with food from one end of the table to the other.

"I couldn't believe it," he told us, "food everywhere on those tables."

And when our workshop was over for the day, he walked with me out the door. "You know, I always feel like I owe women so much," he said. "I owe them to be kind, gentle, and to help because they helped me so much in my youth. I have been told," he said, smiling, "I am a feminist."

Yes, you are, kind sir.

Yes you are.