Flipping Love Songs
There’s this song that I’ve always loved from the moment I heard it. I’ve never heard it on the radio. It was a recommendation on Pandora years ago. This song lit me up from the inside. Cords were struck! It was the melody and the lyrics. Whenever I was with someone I thought I loved romantically, I thought “Maybe this song is for them” Three to six months later, I’d realize the song had nothing to do with my connection to them..
Wrestling With Romantic Love Perspectives
Due to my last two books and personal experiences, one might think I would have a problem with romantic love. I love romantic love but at times I go back and forth on whether it is for me this lifetime. I feel like I fell in love with the people I fell in love with to bring my children into the world. The psychic happenings around their births and before their deliveries are wild. I’ve shared some of the stories on TikTok here and there, and I’ll go into more detail in another post some other time, but my children were meant to be here with me this lifetime. But am I meant to be romantically connected to someone in this lifetime?
I believe in romantic love and have loved people romantically. There are so many people who do it for as long as they’re supposed to do it, even for the rest of their lives and when I see romantic love in others it gives me hope for all the people I know who crave it, but I don’t crave it.
When I say I’m not focused on romantic love my therapists take it as me feeling undeserving because the first thing they say is “Everyone deserves someone.” I never said I didn’t deserve anything I wanted. I just feel like I have better things to do with my time at this phase in my life. I’ve reached many personal and professional goals while in and out of romantic relationships.
Accomplishing goals while with someone I loved wasn’t always a celebration. Imagine experiencing success amongst your professional peers and then feeling excited to tell your spouse and you see the empty, fake happiness in their face that will soon be followed by a hurtful, disrespectful, or degrading act. I was left licking my wounds while climbing up a mountain and looking over my shoulder because the person who was supposed to be on my side revealed themselves to be a hater.
After that person, I kept my business and personal successes to myself during my next relationships, but it showed in purchases and the way people treated me. Life is too short and there is too much to do for me to manage another person’s ego when they could be out there making things happen for themselves instead of brooding over my blessings. I have so much more to accomplish and my squad grew. No time for carrying adults on my back who might try to trip me on my journey.
I know exactly what type of person I deserve. With the way technology is headed, I could put in the birth chart data and then add the qualities I want in a person and an artificial intelligence algorithm will send me their coordinates, but I’m still not interested in learning more about people from a romantic perspective. I want a deeper sense of self-love.
Magnifying The Mirror
I’ve said this before, but most of my problems can be related to a lack of or an insufficient amount of self-love. A person with deep, unconditional self-love would NEEEEVER find themselves in some of the situations I’ve been in for so long.
There’s this guy who by just existing is doing his part to make me become more present and forcing me to take a deeper look at myself, just as his sisters did when they arrived. This is the most recent, and final addition to my children's squad, my son. I was told about his arrival in 2021 and in that same year I saw him in ceremony. He was born in 2023.
When I look at my son I think about all of the men I loved platonically, romantically, and even as family members who had mommy issues and the damage they did to me and others. I want better for my son and my daughters. They need to see that they have value and that doing the work on their mental and emotional health is also valuable. No friend, lover, or family member they come close to will be perfect, but a person who truly loves them will face their faults, evolve, improve, go to therapy, do the work, love themselves, and care for themselves.
My oldest two children have seen a depressed, low-energy mom - a mean mother who could only show a glimmer of her true self every now and then. In December of 2018 after a series of traumatic happenings for me and my children, someone who was a witness to one of the worst days said some words to me that will stick with me forever. He said, “You don’t love yourself. You get with these men who can’t do anything for you and you have to do all the work. You get tired and you take it out on the kids.” He was my 1st husband’s friend. He got close enough to see our real life and not what my 1st husband wanted people to see. He had people thinking he was the breadwinner, but in reality, whether working for my business or working for a company, it was me who made sure everything was taken care of, and when it got hard, I didn’t have a partner I had a child who was mad that he had to work and refused to get a job. It was frustrating and I wasn’t the best mother to them. I had no patience or grace for the people who loved and cared for me more than he did The way I treated them wasn’t intentional, but they got caught in the ricochet of my depression and exhaustion. His friend’s words dug into me like Scorpion on Mortal Kombat.
Another one of my 1st husband’s friends connected with me about 30 days later. He checked on my daughters and asked me to let him speak from a place of observation. He told me about how he watched my 1st husband and his mother belittle, abuse, and disrespect me and my 1st child for years and he wondered why I never spoke up to him. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to anyone close to them. He explained that he felt their actions toward me and my child were horrible and he always wondered why I stayed. I explained the violence associated with my attempts to leave and how my 1st husband always kept my money tied up with his unfruitful financial endeavors. He said, “Yes, they were wrong, but it’s clear to me that you don’t love yourself. As a father and someone who loves your two daughters none of this sits well with me. No person would endure this much for this long if they loved themselves.” He listed off all the ways I should have left and mentioned that I didn’t do it until it became dangerous.
Even when writing this, I can still feel how I felt when his friends spoke to me. Those were the last times I spoke to either of my 1st husband’s friends. After that last conversation, plus many more conversations that revealed how much I didn’t know about the person I was married to I hit rock bottom mentally and emotionally. I thank God for baby number three for many reasons. Without her, I would have weakened and gone back to the monster I knew because of the familiar trauma. However, I had left the marriage in late summer of 2017, and moved on and I was pregnant at the time of those conversations.
By the time I made it to my OB appointments, I had multiple mental health screenings and they all read depressed on a high level. My doctor’s office made many adjustments for me. Their social worker was a licensed therapist and because it was so difficult to find a therapist - she took me on. I was in her office 2-3 times a week, from then up until three months after I delivered baby number three.
Since 2008, I’ve been actively working on healing and if you dare to travel this road of doing the real work, not just reading a few books and attending spiritual events, but doing the work that is directed toward you, you understand that healing is an onion. Once you heal a layer there are more layers underneath that need your love, care, and grace. To this day, I still peel back the layers for me and my children.
Today the two oldest and my new additions have a mother who openly discusses her mistakes, therapies, ceremonies, and healing techniques that I participate in to be my best self for us. I need them to see that they are worth improvement - that if someone wants to be in their life they will do the work to improve and not just talk - not say they will change and do the same things over and over for decades and then get upset when you speak the truth.
That’s what I grew up with - a man who was all talk when it came to improvement and progress. He was abusive and refused to get help. He said he’d change and never did. As an adult, I ended up with abusive(in different ways) men who refused to get help. They said nothing was wrong with them or that they would change but never did. At the end of the day, it all boils down to value. Was I worth the effort to improve? No - My father didn’t value me nor the men I would later become romantically involved with or even marry. I had to learn how to value and love myself and I’m mad it took me so long.
If my children see their mother doing the work to heal and love herself, maybe they will see what real love looks like - evolution.
Flipping Love Songs
There are so many love songs that I find weak and even disturbing. Some of them are songs I used to sing with my whole chest. “Fool For You” by Melanie Fiona and Ceelo Green was one of those songs. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t singing a duet song by myself. I found myself constantly trying to prove my love and worth and value to someone who was showing me I was not loved, was not worthy, and had no value - to them or myself. What his friend told me was true. Someone who truly loved themselves could never endure all that I did for so long.
With a healed mind and way more self-love, I can honestly say my 1st husband never loved me. I was a convenient pick-me who was his prey. I was with this person from 2005 to 2017. When I left, it was a traumatic experience, and to punish me, he and his mother spread lies about me and destroyed relationships with people I was close to. Many of those relationships have never been repaired and to be honest many of them should not. Some people took their word and never bothered to ask me anything directly. Again, circling back to worth/value - if my relationship with them was worth anything or if I had any value to those people they would have asked me what happened directly instead of cutting contact or rejecting me based on the word of people I know they didn’t like in the first place.
I always come across these statements about how young women need to choose better when they date to avoid problematic men, but they forget people fake their personalities at the beginning of relationships. Even if the relationships are good through and through there are a few key life changes that will reveal the truth of an individual:
The Death of a Relative/Loved One
Pregnancy/Miscairrage/Birth of a Child
A Breakup
If you love yourself with the same intensity and passion as these love songs, you can protect yourself from people who wish to treat you as if you have no worth or value.
In the opening paragraph, I mentioned a song that lit me up inside. Over the years I have tried to pin this song to people who I thought were the one, but they weren’t it. One day while singing this song I thought about the words and I said, this song needs to be sung in the mirror, because it is a love song to the self and all facets of the self - higher self, shadow, etc.
Jhene Aiko may have written the song for the love of that moment in time, but look at her lyrics. Skip Kendrick Lamar’s part because that solidifies it as a romantic love song. If you separate his part and say her 1st verse in the mirror, it is a powerful experience.
Flipping “Stay Ready” Instructions
Clean your mirror with vinegar or Windex
Spiritually cleanse the mirror - smudging, praying, chanting, etc
Ground Yourself & Take 5 deep breaths
Imagine yourself inhaling the air from the between leafy branches of a large tree
Imagine yourself exhaling into the Earth
As you exhale the air flows down your body and between your feet and into the Earth
Sing the lyrics
Skip the Kendrick Lamar part and the rest of the song
Stay Ready by Jhene Aiko
We do not exist inAny other instant Here in this dimension You and I are meant to be I have waited lifetimes to find you Now that you're here, I can remind you Of the things you've been dreamin' times two I promise you If you just give me 24 Man, all I need is 24 hours I promise you'll want plenty more You'll probably be with it forever So how does it sound, us on the ground Giving you my love? There's no place quite like here There's no better time than now You gotta stay ready There's no place quite like here There's no better time than now That's why I stay ready
Love Song Outlooks
Be careful what you sing - especially with emotion. You could be casting a horrible spell on yourself that is keeping you in loops of experiences where you are kept small, unloved, and abused. If you do find these types of love songs on your playlists, ask yourself what ties you to those lyrics, that energy, or the emotion the singer is emitting. If it is the beat, then consider what you are beating into your consciousness.
Things to Consider
Which love songs do you recognize as self-deprecating?
Which songs double as self-love songs?
Who needs to see you love yourself the most?