Why is it so difficult to love ourselves? Why is it so hard to utterly accept our flaws, our mistakes, our imperfections? Sure, we want to love ourselves. Every self-help book and life coach and personal development course tells you to. But come on, let’s be honest. It just ain’t that easy to love the cellulite, the wrinkles, the flabby arms, the failures.

My whole life I’ve been trying, though. Against the mental non-stop chatter of you’re-not-good-enough, you’re-not-pretty-enough, you’re-not-really-a-good-writer, I’ve been trying to discover the secret doorway into real, unabashed, foot-stompin’ self-love. Over the years, I’ve seen it in a few people – very few – that authentic shimmering, a quiet, soft beauty, an almost palatable light, emanating from their skin. All I know is that it’s a process. But not the process I thought it would be. Instead of repeating a thousand “I love myself” affirmations, or creating a vision board crowded with images torn from magazines, it’s been a very, very slow dawning – a quiet awakening to a different voice inside – a different set of eyes that see a bigger, broader truth about me, about Life.

Yes, it’s a spiritual thing for sure – an ability to see beyond this sixty-inch tall Brooklyn-born form named Marcia – a capacity to see more deeply – to see through the incredibly confining prison of my opinions and thoughts and beliefs. There are moments - not quite 24-hour days yet – but genuine moments where I can feel, in my body, this exquisite beauty that I’m somehow part of – that you’re part of – that we’re all part of. And when that happens, no matter how rare, I’m no longer searching for self-love, I’ve become it.

Many years ago a poem flowed through me that describes what I seem to be talking about. It’s titled: Simple Instructions on How to Find the Buried Treasure. Happy hunting.