When I say I love myself, I don’t mean it in a vapid, surface-level, timid, infantile way. I don’t mean I look in the mirror and am pleased by my physical aesthetic. I don’t mean I’m free from what people think about how I look, the presence I create when I walk into the room or how others feel about me.

It means I’m uncompromising about how fiercely I cherish myself and how I demand others who I am in relationship with — friends, family members, lovers, other writers, artists and creators — do as well. It means with everything I do and with every aim it is to ensure I am radiating that soul-deep cherish, the cherish which permeates through the center of my being.

My love, my self-love, is intimate, introspective and sustains me. It reminds me, on those days, those days when life itself, circumstances or other people are unloving, cruel and unfair that I have myself and I have my love and my love, my self-love, can truly be enough.

When I say I love myself, I don’t mean I love my talents, skills and abilities although all these things make me who I am and make why I am, why I am a living, breathing member of this world essential. Loving myself means I trust my spirit and treat it as such, as a sacred entity in and of myself. It means my intuition is treated as a fine companion that is guiding and guarding me from all unnecessary pain, suffering perils and should be heeded as such. It means my joy and peace are at the forefront and constantly unraveling and clearing away any of the things that rob me of either is work I must do.

Yes, I do, finally, look in the mirror and see a woman I adore, a woman I am in awe of, I see the beauty in her eyes, the big, abundant frog eyes she was teased about as a child, and I see them as even more wondrous when they are sparking and full of glee. I see my curves, luscious lips and nappy hair as things of beauty and things to be appreciated.

But when I look in the mirror, I also see my heart. I feel the essence of my heart, too, and I hope others who come into contact with see and feel my heart, too, which is why being gentle and kind with it matters — and is another way I extend love to myself.

It’s no mistake when I dared to selfishly love myself, when I dared to give myself the nurturing, the gentleness, the kindness I had ached for all my life, the things I desperately wanted from my parents, lovers and friends but seemed to only be caught in a perpetual cycle of getting the opposite, the spring of life flowed through me. It was the genesis of returning to self, of being who I was created to be.

When your self-love becomes transformative, when you feel yourself starting to shift, when how you love yourself becomes the standard for how you will be loved in every situation — your work changes. How you approach writing, artistry and your creativity changes, too. It’s as if you are breathing new life into the process and it becomes a true way to get in touch with yourself undisturbed from the outside world. You lose yourself in the work. Creating no longer is looked at this laborious chore but instead a welcome escape, a place to become swallowed whole by the ingenuity of the core of who you are.

A writer, an artist, a creative — a creator — is often looked at as someone who is only as worthy as what they create. The finished product. We are often judged as the caliber of our level of execution. But what about the journey there? What about what it takes to rise to create something? What about how sometimes it can be more desirable, much easier, to capitulate to the obstacles — doubt, paralyzing fear, procrastination, lack of confidence, insecurity — and yet we find the courage from within, somewhere within ourselves, to create anyway? Does that not mean anything at all?

There is so much which can stop us from getting there, from the finish line, in that finishing becomes even more of a victory. But the road getting there, fighting to get to the finish line, all the preparation, perseverance and grit leans in and acts as its own degree of glorious valor. Our work means so much more because we triumphed above all that could’ve prevented us from completing. And self-love is wrapped up in all of this. Because we dare to love ourselves, because loving ourselves is an act of courage in itself, it demonstrates why love can change everything.

Love, self-love is beginning, middle and end. It is the why. It is what has gotten us here in the first place and it is why, we will keep fighting, keep dreaming, keep producing, keep creating, until the very end.

The world needs your love. The world needs you to love yourself. It is needed in the greater collective.