“I love you.”

I’m trying to get my kids to tell themselves “I love you,” every time they see themselves in the mirror.

They are twelve and ten now, so they roll their eyes at me.
In the entry there is a giant mirror.

Joy does cartwheels in front of it.

Now she makes a point of NOT looking in the mirror while she does cartwheels.

(Because she knows how to push my buttons.)

I get it. At this age, everything mom suggests is weird. And they don’t want to be told what to do.

I just have to hope that I’ve planted a seed and they’ll do it anyway – weird mom or not.

Because everything changes when we truly, unconditionally love ourselves.

I wish I would have started this one sooner, when they were more impressionable.

Because by twelve years old, how many advertisements that tell them they aren’t enough unless they have the right clothes, the right body, the right iphone have they been subjected to?

How many news stories do they consume that remind them of how separate we all are, how much we disagree, how awful the human race is?

If you have little ones or access to them, PLEASE start this now.

Because, think about it…

What would be different if you were brought up to tell yourself I LOVE YOU each time you looked in the mirror?

Maybe, by twelve, despite the ads and the news, you would implicitly know that no diet, car or iphone can make you lovable and you would love yourself enough to offer compassion instead of judgement to your neighbor.

Maybe you would get that you have ALWAYS BEEN LOVABLE.

Maybe you would understand that you came into the world whole and that love is always available to you from within.

My guess is if someone convinced you of this from before you had memory…

You wouldn’t be storming the capital or acting WOKE just to feel superior from the “unwoke” ones.

Self love.

In this day and age when the economy runs on convincing us that a diet, a car, an iphone, a pill, some fast food, cosmetic surgery or the affiliation with one side or another will restore us to wholeness, the ability to love one’s self is a REVOLUTIONARY ACT.

So what do you say… Let’s work together to guarantee that future generations don’t buy into the lie that love comes from a thing or a person or an affiliation with one side or another.

They deserve to know the TRUTH that love comes from one place only: the inside.