Shared with permission from my dear friend Utopia Arising
SELF LOVE IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF BOUNDARIES
Although it is unfortunate the boundaries I employ may be taken personally, my boundaries are never enacted due to loving a person any less. Instead, it is a choice to care for and love myself far greater than anyone in my past ever has. It is the definition of true love when I choose to relate with another person from a space of love, over one of fear, obligation, and the threat of potential
resentment.
Boundaries create an individualized and autonomous expression of real love, which can only start and end with me. Putting my well being first has transformed my own victimhood into the most potent and radical self love that cannot be threatened or possessed by anyone or anything. It has enabled me to free myself from my own prison, and take back the power that I gave away each and every time I looked for another person to heal the wounds that only I have the power to transform.
On the other side of my most debilitating and unrelenting pain lies a reservoir of unopened gifts just waiting for me to unwrap my most profound and greatest liberation. No longer do I have to guilt and shame myself for being responsible for the pain of another person. I have retired the rescuing and responsibility of others. No longer will I interfere robbing another person of their own healing and sovereignty, in exchange for a temporary and false dose of distorted love. By freeing myself, I automatically free others as my freedom removes myself from no longer being a distraction that keeps another from discovering the most priceless and precious gifts that only self responsibility, autonomy and true self love can provide.