Love Your Heart
In the magnificent novel and movie, Beloved, Baby Suggs delivers a sermon out in the clearing. Her sermon includes these magical words: “More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize (Morrison 88). As I’m re-reading this classic, this line tore a hole right through my spirit.
It’s easy to forget how to love yourself, especially when faced with the day to day obstacles of living life. As women, we often put others before ourselves, reducing ourselves to a second thought. I know I have experienced this, and I’ve paid the price for doing so. I’m willing and ready to completely change that.
A woman has to realize that she is at the center of all things. Everything starts, and stops, with her. If she does not face life with passion and tenacity, then those around her (namely her family) will not either. A quote that I have in my journal by Iyanla Vanzant says, “I am the one I have been looking for.” There is nothing on the outside that will love me like I can love myself. The first thing I have to do is look for that love here, before I can go and try to give it away out there.
Being a woman is an amazing thing. The older I get, the more I appreciate every aspect of it. I’ve had a rough couple of years, but through it all I can say that because I am who God made me, I am persevering. I am powerful because my mind and body still works (sometimes I have to beg and plead for them to work, but they work nonetheless). I am beautiful because I simply am. I don’t require validation from anyone or anything. The validation is already within; I just have to find it and love it.
Love your heart. Love the beats that bounce rhythmically in your chest. Love the life that it pumps through your body. Love the goodness found there. Love how it swells with pride, aches with pain, rushes with excitement, and never fails to keep beating. Love it and you will soon find how much it loves you back. And that it has been waiting on you to realize just that, for a very long time.
