How to have your year of “I love myself and I don’t give a damn what other people think”

I can’t remember ever going anywhere without a small notebook in my purse or pocket (and, of course, a pen). 

Over the years and 18 moves I’ve made traversing California in U-Haul after U-Haul as I ping-ponged back and forth between Northern and Southern California, some of the notebooks have vanished but I still have quite a few of them. 

Often they’re filled with grocery lists or packing lists for trips that I hardly remember because I was a different person then, younger and more carefree. There are lots of scribbles of names and phone numbers from random people I ended up on buses or in dive bars with during my 20s while living in San Francisco. I’ve always had this talent for turning small talk into unexpectedly deep conversations and afterwards, people feel this need to pretend it’ll happen again hence all the names and numbers that rarely went anywhere.

In those small notebooks, there are one-liners that came to me that I hoped to one day weave into a piece of writing or that I jotted down so I wouldn’t forget a moment. Things like, “my wrinkles are badges of honor” or “we are our own soulmates” or “Luca’s eyes when he looks in a mirror.” 

While most of the scenes that those phrases popped into my head are a mystery…. a few take me right back to the moment. The wrinkles and soulmates… those moments are gone. But, when I read “Luca’s eyes when he looks in a mirror”, I’m transported to the day we put a mirror on the headrest facing my son Luca’s car seat. The look on his face… It was as if he was looking at the most magnificent creature on the planet. It was as if he’d just fallen in love at first sight and was ready to give up everything he’d known before that moment. It was if he was totally unapologetically in love with himself. 

It seemed like that, because that’s exactly what was happening. Luca was (and still is) in love with himself. All the self-consciousness that comes when you’re no longer a baby (hello, puberty and Junior High trauma!) is still a ways down the road. The inevitable need to put your own wants and needs aside to live up to other people’s expectations lies far off in the distant future. For now, it’s pure love, acceptance and gravitating toward joy. 

I’m not naive. I know us adults can’t spend our days staring in the mirror and giggling or throwing whatever displeases us across the room or saying “no” about 5,000 times a day. 

But, I do think we can try to tap into that baby love we felt for ourselves before we understood that there was any possibility that we weren’t perfect. And, we can remember that once, there was a time that we only tried to please ourselves. We weren’t hung up on what other people thought about what we did or whether we’d succeed or fail when we tried something new (watch a toddler learn to walk for a refresher course in resilience). I’m not advocating for adult-style brussels sprout tantrums or leaving your stuff strewn wherever you please. 

But, what if this year you love yourself a little more than you did last year? What if you embrace that quality about yourself that’s always made you insecure and realize that as Meryl Streep said…..