Use loneliness. Its ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world. Take that aching and use it to propel you deeper into your need for expression—to speak, to say who you are and how you care about light and rooms and lullabies.

What makes self-love powerful is that it is not just a way of seeing ourselves, but a series of actions that continuously align us with a greater vision of who we are growing into.

This relationship was fulfilling, nurturing, inspiring, loving, honest, and faithful. This was the relationship I’d been searching for all my life. I soon realized that all the love and support I’d been lusting after in a man was inside me all along.