For a long time, I misunderstood self love. I thought it was something you practiced once your life felt settled, once you felt confident, once things finally looked the way they were supposed to. I treated it like a reward you earned after doing everything right. If I was honest with myself, I believed self love would come later, after I proved I was worthy of it and not just to myself, but to others as well, namely the focus of my affections.

What I have learned, both through my own life and through watching countless women navigate change, is that self love does not arrive at the end of the journey. It is what makes the journey survivable in the first place. Without it, we build lives focused on endurance and expectation. With it, we begin making decisions that actually support both who we are and who we are becoming.

Radical self love is often misunderstood because it gets confused with indulgence or self focus. In reality, it is neither soft nor self absorbed. It is rooted in honesty, an honesty that is sometimes a painful truth. It is the decision to stop abandoning yourself in order to keep the peace, maintain appearances, or meet expectations that you never should have been aligned with to begin with. It is the willingness to look at your own life and admit where you have been overriding your needs to make things easier for everyone else.

For many women, this realization arrives quietly, without warning. You notice how often you push past your limits. You recognize how frequently you minimize what you want or need. You see how quickly you offer compassion to others while withholding it from yourself. Here’s the thing, these patterns do not mean that you lack strength or awareness. They mean you were taught to survive first and consider yourself later.

Radical self love begins when you decide that survival is no longer enough. It begins when you choose to stand with yourself, not once everything is figured out, but right where you are, in this very moment.

For many women, self love was never modeled as a practice. What was modeled instead was endurance. You learned how to be responsible, accommodating, and emotionally available long before you learned how to listen to your own needs. Praise often came when you were helpful, agreeable, or low maintenance. Over time, this taught you that being needed was safer than being honest, and that taking care of yourself was something you did only after everyone else was settled.

As adults, this conditioning shows up in subtle but persistent ways. You ignore physical and emotional exhaustion because pushing through feels familiar. You second-guess your instincts because you were taught to prioritize harmony over truth. You stay in situations longer than you should because leaving feels disruptive. None of this is accidental. It is the result of a lifetime of reinforcement that taught you to equate love with sacrifice.

Self love was never framed as a skill or a boundary. It was framed as something optional, or worse, selfish. So when you begin to feel disconnected or depleted, your instinct is not to turn inward with care, but to try harder, give more, and adjust yourself to fit. Radical self love begins by recognizing that this pattern was learned, not chosen, and that it can be unlearned with intention and compassion.

It asks for honesty before comfort. It requires you to notice where you are saying yes when your body is already tired, where you are staying silent to avoid tension, and where you are shrinking yourself to keep situations manageable. These moments often feel small, but oh baby do they add up. Each one is a quiet signal that you are prioritizing ease over alignment, and over time, that choice becomes downright exhausting.

This kind of self love is not about always choosing what feels good in the moment. In fact, it often feels uncomfortable at first. It can mean setting boundaries that disrupt familiar dynamics. It can mean disappointing people who are used to your availability, which can lead to the fracture and sometimes even the ending of a relationship you thought would stand the test of time.

It can also mean choosing rest without explanation or making decisions that do not come with immediate validation. Radical self love is the willingness to tolerate temporary discomfort in exchange for long-term integrity.

Most importantly, radical self love is consistent. It is not a single decision or declaration. It is the ongoing practice of checking in with yourself and responding honestly. It is choosing to take yourself seriously even when no one else is watching. Over time, this consistency rebuilds self-trust, which is the foundation for every meaningful change you will make.

Warning, this part is going to hurt. This is when you will be forced to stand in the beliefs you have about yourself. Because when self love is missing, change becomes performative. So you try to improve yourself from a place of inadequacy rather than care. I can recall some very specific moments in the last few years where I wasn’t changing for me. I was doing it to be chosen, accepted, and worthy of the love I was seeking from someone else. And that realization can be a painful one at first.

When self love is absent, you chase growth while quietly believing that something about you needs fixing, that who you are in this moment isn’t good enough. That mindset creates an intense amount of pressure that drowns out any progress, which eventually leads to burnout or resentment.

But when self love becomes the foundation, your relationship with change shifts. You make adjustments because you respect yourself, not because you are trying to earn worth or approval. You begin to listen to your body instead of overriding it. You choose environments, routines, and relationships that support who you are becoming rather than those that drain you. As a result, progress becomes steadier because it is rooted in self-respect.

Radical self love does not create complacency. It creates clarity. It helps you see where effort is needed and where rest is required. It allows you to move forward without abandoning yourself in the process. From that place, change becomes sustainable, and not because it is easy, but because it is aligned.

Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly.

Where am I asking myself to endure something that requires self-betrayal and/or self-abandonment?

Choose one small way to show up differently this week. Say no. Slow down. Speak up. Or stop explaining yourself. Self love grows through action, not intention.

Reply back and let me know what way you’re showing up differently this week. I read every email.

Radical self love is not loud. It does not announce itself. It is built quietly through everyday choices that say, “I matter too.” When you stop treating yourself as an afterthought, your life begins to reorganize around that truth.

This is not selfish. It is necessary.

— Donteacia