Maybe you should be buying yourself some flowers.
I valued giving, over receiving, and I could just want myself into exhaustion because I
was really looking for my worth and my validation from outside of myself.
A Valentine's Day discussion on being your own best friend.
I'm Susan Barnett and this is 51% the women's perspective.
On Valentine's Day, we traditionally think about love.
But what if you decided to be your own Valentine this year?
With so many of us trying to do it all, while doing way too much,
this year perhaps it's time to stop and look in the mirror and ask yourself if you're being your
own best friend. And if you aren't, what does that teach the next generation?
Christina Rylow's book, Madly in Love with Me, the daring adventure of becoming your own best friend,
talks about why you need to love yourself and how to start.
I don't think there's a single person who will hear this interview, who either doesn't have
some issues themselves in terms of not giving themselves enough credit for what their abilities are
and what good people they are or they know someone and we've always been taught, first of all,
don't be full of yourself. And so that flies in the face of efforts to say yes, but I have
these wonderful qualities because there's another little voice in your head that says,
that I don't be full of yourself. It's like being called to full of yourself or vain or
conceited, it's like kind of like being a leper. And I was like, no, we don't want to be that,
we downplay ourselves all the time, but the truth is that loving yourself and really feeling good
about yourself and acknowledging yourself and appreciating yourself, all of our energies and
things that you want to receive from someone else. And the good news is that if you're not already
a narcissist, it's not likely to happen. It's not contagious. Narcissus starts at a very early age,
so if you're not likely to become one. And most people, especially women, are much more likely
to be self-listened than they are to be selfish. So explain to me what got you interested in
this topic and why you were the person to write this book. About 11 years ago, I was a woman who
was full of self-esteem, but lacked self-respect, lacked self-awareness, lacked certain capacity of
self-worth. And I didn't even know it. I was living my life the way that I had been taught to
live it, which was what many of us got. You don't go out in the world and you can do and be
and have it all. Though I had the big house, I had the big car, and I was 30 years old, and the next
stage was to get married. And on the way to my engagement party, my fiance had a different idea,
and he decided to end the engagement. He sent the next two weeks really baggamous man to take me back.
And once I had a walk up out of that fog, I came to really hard truth. And the question with myself
was Christine, how did a smart woman get here in this relationship and romantic life as a mess?
And you don't even really like the way that you're living your life. And the end of the
end was Christine, you have a lot of self-esteem and a lot of self-confidence, but you don't love
yourself. And for the 11 years throughout the 11 years, I have identified and found all the
different ways in which I don't love myself and all the ways in which I did. And when I found
once there just wasn't a book out there, there wasn't anyone really teaching what self-love is.
And how has made it making that change change you and changed your life?
Oh my gosh, it's changed in so many ways. I can remember the first call that there's five
gates of self-love that I talk about that I think we pass through to come to a really deeper place
of self-worth with ourselves. And the first gate, as I will never settle for less than my heart and soul
desire. And when I really made that promise to myself, I ended up quitting my job in Chicago.
And I was on this path to having a job that was going to be a great career. I've been very successful,
but it was not an alignment with what I wanted. And then after that really came into place, I'd
met a promise to myself that I would only have loving respectful relationships. And that opened
up the path for me to meet my soul partner, Noah, who I'm now married to. I've created such
amazing friendships and set time. All the relationships that didn't work or that were toxic have
you just shifted or they have left my life. And so my life is full of love. I am one of the wealthiest
people in love that I know. And another big piece of my also a gate that I passed through was
I realized how hard I was on myself. You know, really successful, but I was always like,
we're done doing it, not you should be doing more. And you know, oh, you can't try that, you're
going to fail. And it's always like I was at such pressure to do and be in habit all. And I
suffered from comparison. One of the biggest diseases of our time. And now, you know, years later,
I actually can I could rest without doing guilty. And I can celebrate my successes without
always pushing myself to the next place. Okay, you've got through three. You want to mention the other two?
Yes, the other one was my body is my temple. Ah, that's a big one.
It's a big one because I even know both of my life I've been, you know, like 5, 7, 130 pounds.
Even when I was 25 and maybe a hush and 20 pounds, I, all I saw when I looked in the mirror
was cellulite. And it wasn't that the cellulite's not still there because of course it is,
but I stopped seeing it all the time. And even when I do see it, now I'm able to be compassionate
about it. So the huge, huge shift for me to really become a body lover instead of a body
and then the other, the last one was I take care of myself first without guilt and obligation.
And now one was a huge one because it really helped me see all the ways in which I had become an
achievement junkie and all the ways that it was, we came in doing addict and all the ways in which
I valued giving over receiving and how I could just run myself into exhaustion because I was really
looking for my worth and my validation from outside of myself.
This is a wonderful topic for Valentine's Day.
Yes, Valentine's Day, you know, I laugh, but not really because I know it's a day that
is very, it's a day that's supposed to be about love, right? Valentine's is supposed to be about
love and whether you're listening to this in your single or you're listening to this in your
relationship. It's been my experience until I started celebrating Valentine's Day differently
that most of us are either let down or for in relationship it's usually some kind of letdowns
that can never really build up to what we've created in our mind like New Year's Eve, right? It's
never what we want it to be. And like those that are single are just like devastated because they
don't have a Valentine's, it would be like being in sixth grade and you're the only person who
didn't get a Valentine. So what if we took February 13th that day before Valentine's Day and we
made it about loving ourselves so that no matter what happened on Valentine's Day, it didn't matter
what how much love you got from anyone else because you were so full of love. So February 13th
is the International Day of Self Love. I found it about five years ago. Every year people from
around the world throw self-love parties and I'll be out actually on the east coast and the west coast
and kind of flying around and then I'm hosting a self-love concert which is a free concert for
anyone who wants to come at selfloveconcert.com. So I will be broadcasting a concert that helps people
identify where they need love the most from themselves in 2013 using my self-love tree and then
creating a promise that you can keep for yourself all year long. Most of us instead of living by the
self-love handbook lived by the self-sacrifice handbook which has been something that's been passed
around by generations and generations that basically says your value comes from giving.
Given, given, given, given, keep giving and even if there's no more to give, give more and you are
valued as a person by how much you give and so the idea and notion that we should receive as well
is very foreign to us and actually feels wrong and if you then look at the self-esteem handbook which
most of us received starting in the book of the 1970s with the last wave of feminism, the
message that you can do and be and have anything has been a great message but its sole focus has
become about self-esteem. So that's why most of us feel pressured to do and be and have it all
because we're actually living up to expectations that are totally unsustainable and so we really need
to be able to foster things like self-compassion where we can be kind and gentle to ourselves.
We really need to foster things like self-care or what we need no matter what and these are
muscles, self-love muscles almost that each of us need to build so that we're not just high
achieving people that are hard on ourselves or high achieving people that are in
toxic relationships that we really have all of the gates of self-love we're moving through and
all the branches of self-love are coming into full bodies that we can, like we give love to other
people all of us is the same as directing love at yourself, no different and love can't be bad
impossible love is only good.
Christina Rilo is the author of Madly in Love with Me, the daring adventure of becoming your
own best friend, find out more at madlyinlovewithme.com.
Coming up, standing up against violence and a complicated love story.
If you missed part of this show or want to hear it again, visit the 51% Archives at WAMC.org.
This week's show is number 1231.
Low self-esteem and self-doubt. They're the insidious ailments that afflict just about every kid
at some time in his or her life. Storyteller Sage Turtle remembers a friendship that saved her
and showed her how ugly we can really be.
So I'm 12 years old and I'm the ugliest, fattest kid at my school.
And one day I'm standing outside of class waiting for the door to open and this girl comes
walking up to me and I have no idea what to expect but experiences taught me it's likely to be bad
whatever it is and she stops and she says you seem really lonely. I see you every day eating lunch
by yourself in the library reading a book and I think you should eat lunch with me and my friends.
And inside my head right there's this like chorus of singing angels and I'm on my knees and
there's tears of cheating down my cheeks but to her I just say yeah I'd really like to
so I do. I start eating lunch every day with Marta and her friends. And after a couple of days she
invites me over to her house after school and she gives you some idea of the Dickensian tragedy
that was my childhood when I call my dad to let him know where I am. His first thought is that
I have been kidnapped right? I have been kidnapped and this is some kind of frantic code that means
please rescue me I'm in terrible danger because that say him seems more likely than me making a friend
but we we get it all worked out. And soon Marta and I are best friends. We are drunk on each
other's company. We spend every single possible moment together at school and then we race each
other to see who can get home first to call the other one so we can like I don't know rehash the
last nine hours that we just spend together and we play endless games of Bat Gamin which I mostly
lose but I don't care. And we listen to Depeche Mode some great reward on the record player and we laugh
and tell stories and I bloom and blossom into a new girl with her. And the years pass and now we're
15 and Marta gets a crush on the most boring boy in the entire world. Scott is his name. He has beige
clothes and beige skin and beige hair and a beige mind and now suddenly she's playing back in with
him during lunch. That's a two person game and now when I call her after school her phone is busy
and now instead of talking about Reagan's policies in the USSR or having conversations like
what do you think Scott might be thinking about right now and I don't know what he's thinking but
I bet it's so dull and so I sort of accidentally trip and fall and hold Scott's hand all throughout
the school performance of my fair lady. Now I know this sounds very tame to you but please
remember that not only was this 30 years ago but that Marta and I were remarkably naive,
chased girls even for the 80s. So if we adjust for inflation imagine that I've said that Scott
and I made love in the aisle all throughout the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane. I mean this is
this is the enormity of my betrayal and Marta finds out and she corners me at school and she screams
at me for 20 minutes and everything she says is just and everything she says is right and all I can do
is stand there saying please tell me what I can do to fix this I'll do anything. She walks away
and she stops and turns back and she says nothing there is nothing that you can do.
And so for the next two weeks I eat a lot of ice cream I watch a lot of really bad television.
I cry in the bathtub and the grocery store and math class and breakfast. I mean if you can imagine
my father is bewildered by this grief-stricken child you know I'm like an Italian widow at a grave
sign and he doesn't love me anymore. Could you at least turn the volume down and the
him answer. Sage you'll find another friend and I'm thinking right I'm thinking it took me 12
years to find this one I'm going to be like graduated from university before I find another friend
and and also I wish Marta dead. I mean pretty much if I'm awake I'm wishing Marta dead in this great
variety of interesting ways though they all sort of end with the same scene right so like in the
moment she's savaged by wolves in our little suburban park I come across her because I'm walking
from one fabulous party to another fabulous party and she's lying there in the grass there's
this like thread of blood trailing out of her mouth and she looks up at me and she says I'm so sorry
I wish I had understood what an amazing person you are. Please take me back and I do right I always
take her back and I forgive her and then she dies and I step over her and I I continue on to the
the second party and at the end of these two weeks Marta has a brain hemorrhage. She's in the hospital
in a coma for a month a grinding awful month and when she does wake up I'm desperate to go and see
her and my dad says absolutely not you can send her flowers and that's all so I do I send her flowers
and Marta spends the next year in the hospital learning how to write and talk and eat all over again
and I learn how to make friends on my own and then she does come back to school and I'm standing
outside class and I'm waiting for it to start and she comes walking up to me and her gate
is unsteady and she's wearing this big plastic helmet to protect her head and I have no idea what to
expect she hasn't spoken to me since that awful day and she stops in front of me and she says
I just wanted to say thank you after all those terrible things that I said to you all of them deserve
right after all those terrible things that I said to you you sent me flowers and that really meant
something to me and I'm looking at her and I'm thinking I could live to be 102 years old I will
never be as kind as this girl and then she invites me to her house and all through that fall and
that winter we play endless games of backgammon and we listen to the patch mode on the record player
and it's really frantic and it's really forced and there's always this shadow sage and the shadow
marda and they're laughing together and we're not if you were to see marda walking down the street
today with her partner and her two children you would never have any idea that anything had ever
happened to her she's a successful therapist specializing in of all things adolescent behavior
and if we were to meet for the very first time today we'd have nothing to talk about but
every once in a while as I roll the dice for yet another doomed backgammon game
when I hear blasphemous rumors on the PA at the grocery store when I see two geeky girls
on the subway laughing together I feel an ache for that girl one who saw my stark loneliness
and instead of walking by reached out I am sage turtle is a Toronto Bay storyteller find her at
tyrtle.com and finally valentine's day has also become v day a day to speak out against violence against
women this year Carla Goldstein of the omega women's leadership center says she's going to be
part of a global movement to dance her protest one of the most important revolutions against depression
happening now is the empowerment of women around the world without resorting to arms women are
actively engaged in their own emancipation demanding to be included in life's most basic
opportunities and to be free from physical violence and abuse systemic violence against women
has been one of the primary means used to maintain women's subordinate status throughout time
and all societies over the past century great progress has been made as women have demanded new
public policies laws and penalties supporting their safety new levels of awareness have been created
about the impact of permeating culture with degrading images of women and girls safe houses
emergency phone lines shelters and support for victims have developed a strong network of havens
and help and yet as this important progress unfolds the statistics on violence against women
are still staggering today on the planet a billion women one out of every three will be raped or
beaten in her lifetime this must stop in the spirit of emigoldmans often quoted phrase if I can't dance
I don't want to be part of your revolution women are fighting back but not with violence with dancing
in a growing revolutionary effort v day an organization dedicated to ending violence against women
and girls is calling for a day of action larger than any other in history called billion rising
this Valentine's Day February 14th people all over the world will dance and rise to demand and
end to violence against women and girls everywhere the goal of one billion rising is to create a
simultaneous worldwide celebration that honors our capacity for change to make the earth move by
uniting us through dance people in over 190 countries have already signed up to participate
in organizations companies activists unions governments artists and leaders from all corners of the
earth men and women have committed to rising human beings have done amazing things that have changed
the course of history we have healed lifted innovated and redeemed the human spirit time and time
again if we can put someone on the moon stop diseases from spreading transmit information around the
world in a keystroke then I believe it is possible to stop violence against women and girls
I believe it's possible to stop violence as the prevalent response to conflict anger and fear
I am rising for my daughters and for your daughters I'm rising because I want all of us to be free
from the suffering caused by violence against women and girls and I'm rising for boys and men
who also need a world where they can be safe and not taught to dehumanize women and girls
and value the feminine parts of themselves I'm rising so that boys and men aren't expected and trained
to harm rape and kill others I'm rising because I believe we can create a nonviolent world I'm
rising to celebrate all of the amazing progress we have made towards emancipating the human spirit
it's easy to be counted as part of the one billion rising all you have to do is rise and dance
on Valentine's Day if you want to take part in this revolutionary effort visit 1billionrising.org
Carla Goldstein is the co-founder of the Omega Women's Leadership Center in Rineback, New York
find out more at eo-mega.org
That's our show for this week thanks to Katie Britain for production assistance our theme music
is by Kevin Bartlett this show is a national production of Northeast public radio our executive
producer is Dr. Alan Shartock if you'd like to hear this show again or visit the 51% archives
go to our website at wamc.org thanks so much for joining us we'll be back next week with another
edition of 51% the women's perspective
