To me, self-love is the act of caring for yourself. You care for yourself because you love yourself. You love yourself like you love your child, or you love your pet.
Practicing self-love means taking the time to give yourself as much attention as you do your child or your pet.
And it’s remembering to treat yourself as if you were a little child; a child who needs unconditional acceptance, patience, and love.
Self-love is about gentleness. It’s about speaking kind words to yourself and taking naps when your body is tired. It’s about recognizing when you’ve pushed yourself too hard and you need to say no to keep healthy emotional boundaries.
It’s about loving your physical appearance even as you age, honoring each wrinkle and every crack as proof you’ve lived through a lot, and you’ve survived. It’s about slowing down and really honoring your body where it is instead of pushing through your physical limits just to prove you’re “tough.”
If you struggle with any of these things, you need to start viewing yourself differently. You need to view yourself like your best friend, like the one and only person who’s going to be with you for your whole life, because that’s exactly who you are.
Oscar Wilde has said, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
And I agree. When you love yourself, you are never alone, and you always have love coming towards you at every moment of every day. So why not practice being gentler with that person who’s going to be with you every moment of every day? Why not learn how to love yourself so you never have to seek it elsewhere? And most importantly, why not learn to love yourself so you can become the self-actualized person you’ve always dreamed of being?
Now… Onto Astrology
What can astrology tell you about self-love? Well, it’s pretty simple: astrology can give you self-understanding which makes room for self-respect and creates self-love.
Self-love all comes down to knowing your true nature. If you don’t know who you are, how can you know how to love yourself best? That’s where astrology comes in. First, you recognize your emotional needs (look to your Moon sign for that). Then your deepest desires (Mars), and next understand your ego (the Sun). What does your main personality want you to achieve in this lifetime, and who does it want you to be while you achieve it? Your Sun sign lays out the personality traits you are here to embody, and once you respect those traits, you can recognize how best to support and love yourself.
When you know how you are meant to function (your Sun sign) you can cultivate more self-compassion, self-trust, and self-understanding. All of these virtues lead to self-love.
Your Moon sign is very important in recognizing how to love yourself unconditionally. If you have a Cancer Moon the way you nurture yourself is going to be very different than if you have an Aries Moon. Mars tells us how you act to get your needs met. Do you have Mars in Scorpio, and have you always been told you’re too intense? Well, maybe there’s a reason for that! And instead of berating yourself and trying to change, you should put yourself in roles and relationships where that intensity is valued!
This is why astrology is so helpful, yet so complex. Each planet tells us something different about your makeup which means you can’t just look at one placement to get a clear understanding of who you are. Taking this one step further, let’s examine Mercury. Mercury tells us how you communicate and express yourself to others. It’s your dominant style of relating, so if you have Mercury in Gemini you are going to be a much faster thinker than if you had Mercury in Pisces! It’s just the nature of the sign/planet combination and this is why you need to first understand yourself through astrology so that you can have compassion for the way you operate and stop trying to change yourself to conform because you “think you need to be different.”
Venus tells us how you love and what qualities you look for (and need) in a partner. It tells us what sort of things you value, and as you can imagine, getting to know your Venus will also help you gain more clarity on why you choose the partners and aesthetic surroundings you do. Once you have this understanding, you can freely choose who and what you want to love without caring what society thinks!
There are many more placements in your chart to examine but you can see already how when you combine everything together, you have all the necessary ingredients to make a completely satisfied and happy you. Wouldn't you agree that loving yourself would come easier if you knew that you followed guidance to honor yourself and your needs? That’s what I hope this blog makes you think more about!
If there is one thing I have learned through astrology, it’s that once you understand your core nature and your emotional needs, and you understand how to give yourself the things you need, having someone else is just icing on the cake. It’s no longer their job to make you happy - it’s your job. And once you honor this, it takes a lot of pressure off your relationship.
Finally, once you learn all about yourself through astrology - and begin implementing all the behaviors that satisfy your soul - you can then start learning about others through their chart and gain a deeper understanding of their needs which will create more harmony in all your relationships.
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