Self-Love to Womanhood

By Daniela

For some women, womanhood is discovered when they get their menstrual cycle for the very first time.

For me, it wasn't then. The first time I found out what it meant to be a woman was the day I learned how to love myself. That time didn't come early in my life, just like the menstrual cycle, it brought me great pain, and it never made any sense. 

Self-love was a journey I didn't know I needed and a journey I didn't realize *changed* me. There is a lot to be said about what a woman should be, but there isn't a handbook that breaks down the process of reaching self-love so one shouldn't have to. 

Let me paint a scenario for you: The symptoms of your menstrual cycle are quite similar to those you feel when you're trying to find self-love. You spend your days complaining about what being a woman is like, and you repeat the process every month. 

It also doesn't help that you spend a lot of time beating yourself up over nothing and crying for the slightest minor discomfort.  

Now, as I grow older, I still don't think about womanhood, and although I have taken a while to write this, I have realized too that it's I am also part of the process. 

I, Daniela Molina, still struggle with the idea of what it means to be a woman, and I don't mean the way society wants us to pressure ourselves to think, but the way we feel on the inside. 

Through the process of self-love, I found the beauty of womanhood. I understood the barriers I unconsciously put myself through. I realized that no one could be kinder for myself -- than me. I learned that a woman can be selfish, bold, eccentric, powerful, beautiful and that she shouldn't apologize for being that way.

For me, self-love started in high school, when I took my first drama class and became vulnerable to the idea of a room shared with people who had personal traumas, a unity of sadness, a mask of inferiority, and that every single person was entitled to this term called: self-love.

If it weren't for my friend, Dela, pushing me to understand the term and force me to incorporate that term into my life, I'm not sure to what degree I would be happy with myself and to what respect I would have given myself as a woman.

The journey of self-love isn't beautiful. It keeps you up at night a lot, just like your menstrual cycle. The first couple of days are dreadful, and you find yourself picking at the things you dislike most about yourself, even when your body is the most vulnerable. 

I lost the woman I was in the midst of these expectations. She'd pick at herself and didn't realize that every day she put on that mindset and let everyone else follow it. As if the things that made her great weren't qualified enough. As if her journey wasn't just as inspiring as her friends. 

"I'm going to love you until you learn to love yourself," I told myself that for two years in this journey of self-love. It was the words of my dear friend Dela that put me through this self-discovery. 

Through the hardships of self-love, I destroyed myself and then picked up the pieces I had left far behind in the dark. I merged my passion, my fear, my weaknesses, and found shapes that would unite them together. 

The process wasn't easy, and I wish I could give you the secret behind finding self-love, but the only thing I can say is that life gets a whole lot easier when you understand your journey and worth is not defined by those who can't see it, that includes yourself. 

No one can be you, live like you, walk like you, breathe like you, and be you. You are made to be so unique that no one could compare to you. In this process, I found that the picture I worked so hard on putting together through my journey of self-love, was a picture of me. 

A picture of who I truly am. Through my self-love, I found that I listen more than I speak, that my mind has no boundaries. That my body curves in a specific area, that my stomach doesn't flatten out how it used to. That my lips swell up like a blowfish when I wake up in the morning, all things I once hated about myself.

But all the things I hated once, I realize I loved. I loved being a passionate woman. A hardworking woman. A woman who says, "No." A woman who doesn't want relationships with people to affect her purpose. 

Through self-love, I found the woman I was always meant to be, and although this woman also feels the effects of weakness in self-love similar to her menstrual cycle, she's ready to take on the next month like she's worked her whole life for it.