Like many people, I journeyed throughout life developing and learning these two very important values in ways that at times felt painful and counterintuitive, but here we are, trying to become a better human, not just to others but also to myself.

In this journey, we go through the initial kindness and sense of self-love that is so interesting to children, the belief of wanting love, searching for love, and meeting it, even if that means meeting it through your own ways.

It is at some point in life during the teen years when this journey can turn unexpectedly, and in the search for your own identity, you lose track of your self-love, your self-compassion, and at times, we treat ourselves with a lack of kindness that can set us in a path of pain and self-doubt. It is then up to us to rewrite the story, look at the moment in which we deviate from our own love, and walk backwards to understand the reasons behind it, only to look at the path ahead with hope and determination.

Self-compassion and kindness have been the way of healing my journey in life through radically accepting who I was and how I got there and feeling totally grateful for the decisions that allowed me to survive through life even after setbacks, challenges, and difficult life experiences. That self-compassion had been my engine over the last eight years of my life, like a reminder of a second opportunity and the responsibility that comes from learning from our own mistakes. Now, we have a different mindset set. I look at the path ahead with the illusion of knowing that even if all is lost, I still have the love within to spark and light the way.

Hari om tat sat.