This Is How You Will Teach Yourself To Love Yourself After Betrayal

On the mornings when you miss the people who betrayed you and left your heart broken, when you feel like getting out of bed is impossible, you will take three deep breaths, gingerly place your feet on the floor and centre your feelings. This is how you will love yourself.

On the afternoons when you feel your breath constricting when you cross by their place of work, choked with memories, with sadness, with pain, you will allow the feelings to pass by finding a close by coffee shop and learning to breathe as you taste your favourite cup of coffee. You will remind yourself how you are still swimming out of their betrayal and it is okay, it is normal and natural to feel this way. This is how you will love yourself.

On the nights when their phone calls used to be so frequent and now do not exist and you feel the urge to pick up the phone and call them, you will switch your phone off and put it in a place you do not reach for. Then you will go and cook yourself a nice dinner and watch your favourite film. This is how you will love yourself.

Meditate. Listen to the rain. Walk by the sea. Do all the things you have always wanted to and do them alone. Use them as balm for your still healing heart.

Self care is allowing yourself to feel the betrayal but not letting it destroy your self respect. Self care is recognising the pain, but allowing it to be a teacher instead of a demon. Self care is acknowledging that you have work to do in regards to your self love especially after someone you love has betrayed you and rocked your self worth.

Start collecting those pieces of yourself they left shattered across the floor. It’s going to take precision and care to piece them back together. But by slowly acknowledging your loss, by slowly remembering how worthy you are of love, you will glue yourself back together.

Remember this about the ones who betrayed you. Their love was neither as honest nor as pure as the love you give to yourself. It’s the only love worth having.