The Love You Seek Is Already Here

Christmas brings out longing. Not just for gifts or gatherings, but for something deeper. The kind of closeness that makes you feel seen. The kind of warmth that lets you rest without needing to perform. The kind of connection where you can exhale fully because you know you are understood. This time of year highlights the places where love has felt distant. Even when the lights are glowing and the room is full, there can be a quiet ache in your chest. A sense of wanting more. A desire to be held, not just physically, but emotionally.

There is a particular loneliness that comes when you are surrounded by people yet do not feel known by them. You can laugh, participate, engage, and still feel yourself sitting slightly behind your own eyes. Present, but not reached. This feeling does not mean you are broken. It means your heart is still searching for something it has not felt in the way it needed. For many, this search has been directed outward, toward people, relationships, attention, affection, validation. And while connection is real and meaningful, it cannot replace the connection you have with yourself.

Why I Love Being in Love With Myself speaks to this truth with softness:

"You do not need to become more to be worthy. You simply need to remember who you are."

Love does not begin in another person’s embrace.
It begins with how you treat yourself when no one is watching.
It begins in the way you speak to yourself when you feel lonely.
In the way you tend to your own heart when it aches.
In the way you give yourself permission to need gentleness.
In the way you allow yourself to take up emotional space instead of shrinking to be easy.

The love you seek is not absent.
It has simply been waiting for you to turn inward.

You are not hard to love.
You simply have not always been loved in the way your heart was designed to receive love.
And that is not your failure.
It is evidence that something inside you has always known what love should feel like.
Soft. Attentive. Warm. Patient. Safe.

When you begin to love yourself with that same tenderness, everything changes.
You stop chasing love.
You start recognizing it.
You stop longing for proof.
You begin living in connection with yourself.

This Christmas, you do not need to earn your place at the table.
You do not need to perform togetherness.
You do not need to pretend you feel full when your heart is still hungry.

You can give yourself what you have been waiting to receive.

This Christmas, may you give yourself the tenderness you have waited for.