Booth Andrews | Founder of The Booth Andrews Company

I haven’t been in a committed partnership (or intimate relationship of any kind) for almost 9 years. 

Sometimes it is lonely … missing that deep connection with another adult human in my day-to-day.

I am also acutely aware that we can be in a committed partnership and still feel very much alone.

I was pondering these things earlier this year when I realized something.

In many ways, I am less alone than I have ever been.

Because I am more WITH MYSELF than I have ever been before.

And to celebrate this relationship I’ve worked hard on building, I wrote a love letter to myself that I hope will inspire you to take stock of your own relationship with yourself.

Dear Booth,

I’m glad you’re here.

I’m glad you’re more present.

More attentive.

More responsive.

More nurturing. 

Less likely to deny our own truth. Or our knowing.

Less likely to buy into the conditioned and cultural messages that declare that self-abandonment and/or self-flagellation are indicators of morality.

Less likely to use the force of our will (or a constant drip of adrenaline and cortisol) to marshal a certain level of functionality and performance. 

More likely to give ourself the time and space we crave.

To move at a pace that honors our capacity.

To allow time to rest and recover after we push.

And to seek out the things that bring us joy.

We are safer in our own skin. Both literally and figuratively.

More likely to tend to our own needs without shying (or running) away from the uncomfortable parts.

More likely to ask for what we need from others. And to set boundaries around structures, relationships, and ways of being that no longer work for us.

We can give ourself permission to honor the complexity of being human. To hold the both and instead of either or. 

We know that we can honor others’ pain without fearing that it invalidates our own. 

We can resist the cultural habituation that demands we hold up a measuring stick against suffering.

We can extend self-compassion to the parts of us who worked so hard to survive, to keep us safe, and who didn’t know then what we know now. 

And we can return to ourself, over and over again, when we realize that we have left part (or all) of us behind.

I may be late to our own party. But I made it.

And I’m glad you’re here with me.

Love,

Booth

And now my challenge to those reading this…

What would it be like to know that, no matter what happens, you’ve got YOU in your corner?

To know that you have (developed) the capacity to be with you, choose you, honor you, support you, tend to, celebrate and nourish you.

That YOU can trust YOU.

Yes, you can buy yourself chocolate, flowers, ice cream, a lovely dinner or whatever feels like a celebration to you.

But even more than that, you are present to your own value and worth.

I am not saying that we don’t need other people. We absolutely do. 

I am saying that we need ourselves TOO.

My wish for you is that you will come to feel, if you don’t already, the confidence, strength, power, and vitality that comes when you know you are never leaving yourself (again). And that if you do get lost–because you are human–you know how to find your way back.

I hope – if you can’t right now – that one day you will be able to write your own love letter to yourself and honor everything YOU are and can be to YOU.

May it be so.