That Time We Tried to Fall Head Over Heels in Love
…with ourselves.
“You need to fall head over heels in love with yourself.”
She prescribed me these words with the utmost conviction. Conviction that came from years of undertaking the same work herself, and a prescription that came from seeing the initial symptoms start to emerge in a younger version of herself. As much as I dreaded the task ahead, I knew she was right, and that this was the time.
I had spent the past 10 months going full speed ahead, moving from one thing to the next without pause. I found community, I helped make a bunch of things (ranging from house dinner to a city festival), I felt at home in the place from which I was constantly running, I fell in love, and I switched jobs and career tracks. And yet, sitting here as she asked me what I wanted, what my gift was, how I thought I could take care of others without caring for myself first, I had no answers (and no where to run).
“Everyone wants a piece of Mathura,” she had said earlier. And selfishly, I had handed over pieces of myself — it made me feel useful, like I belonged, like I was a part of something bigger than myself. And now that those pieces had been returned, I had to figure out how they fit together again. And the pieces themselves had changed — some had expanded, and others broken, some had been lost and others added. My initial instinct has always been to hand them out again, soon after they’ve been returned. She challenged me to fight that instinct, to accept the tougher challenge of sitting with the pieces and imagining what they could become together, understanding what binds them, as a whole, as me.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.” — Viktor Frankl
There was a space that had been created, and in truth, I was now frantically trying to fill it. When I think of unoccupied space, I get anxious before I get excited. It feels like wasted time, I wonder if I’m not doing enough, it feels like unused potential, it feels uncertain and it feels uncontrolled. I yearn to name it, to put structure and parameters around it, to give it a purpose, to schedule it in, to create accountability measures to ensure something worthwhile comes out of it.
Most times though, I think I jump to filling the space prematurely. I don’t spend enough time sitting in the space, dreaming of all the things it could become, understanding the space and its unique character and capabilities, thinking beyond what it could become and about what it’s best positioned to become. Thinking about how this space might fit within the greater whole — how might this space fit with, balance out, and synergize with all of the other spaces in my life?
I say I want to fill the space because I want to give it a purpose and a frame, but isn’t doing that intentionally rooted in the answers to the questions above?
I feel this (almost always) false sense of urgency around filling the space, when really, it’s self-imposed. More often than not, I’m the one that’s rushing me and the rest of the world is fine with waiting for me to figure it out. Part of internalizing that lack of urgency is recognizing that I’m not as important as I think I am.
So take a moment to breathe, love.
The world needs you, but it needs you to show up as your most authentic self, more than it needs you to show up right away.
Keep doing the work with yourself, to find and stay rooted in your authenticity, and when you hit an unexpected turn, don’t will yourself to brave on. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge what may have been lost, mourn the loss of what could’ve been, and invite that empty space in with abundance (i.e. What more is possible now with this additional space?) vs scarcity (i.e. I’m not doing enough and need to find a way to fill this space ASAP).
Welcome it with patience rather than with haste. Welcome it as you would like to be welcomed, and acknowledge the power, agency, and responsibility you have in deciding what it becomes.
As I sat down this weekend to tackle her prescription, that is, to fall head over heels in love with myself, I had no idea where to start. So I started with cleaning my room, in hopes that clearing the clutter in my physical space might surface some clarity in my mental space. (In truth, my motivation wasn’t nearly as profound. Frankly, my room was a disaster and I was walking a fine and dangerous line with the woman who gave me life.)
Profound or not, it was in clearing the clutter that I found the box of all the cards, postcards, letters, notes anyone has ever written me. Some of them were birthday cards, but others were random notes or thank you cards. The latter were the ones that got me thinking. What prompts someone to take time out of their day, to put pen to paper, to express how they feel about you? It reminded me of a quote from Vicki Saunders’s Think Like A SheEO:
“One easy way to know where your strengths lie is the positive feedback you get when you’re doing what you’re great at. Because when you produce effortless excellence, other people notice.”

While the idea of sitting there reading through cards to find my effortless excellence felt a tad narcissistic, I knew that this wasn’t about making me feel better about myself. It was about finding the truth, my truth. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve wished that those closest to me could see themselves through my eyes, and the number of times people have said the same thing to me. This was me giving myself that opportunity. I ignored the blanket “You’re nice” (thank you high school yearbook, real deep) and “Don’t ever change!” (change what?), and instead wrote out the lines from letters, postcards, and emails that spoke to something more nuanced.
Why were they writing me? What about the time we shared together moved them? What parts of me stand out as the loudest in their minds? What unique value did I contribute? When did I worry/hurt them?
These were my key questions and each line I recorded was a data point. The data spanned the past seven years of my life, personal and professional, snail mail, emails, cards, letters, written feedback, quotes from conversations, and the odd love note written in transit on the back of an aloe vera box. My inner design researcher was in heaven.
Approaching it as a design research project was helpful in several ways. There was a level of detachment which made it easier to receive and internalize the positive feedback. I didn’t have to quell the urge to deflect or minimize compliments because it was all data, and as a design researcher, the more data points, the better.
On that note, however, I was worried about getting caught up in my strengths, without collecting enough data on my not-so-strengths… given that most people don’t write you notes/cards/postcards to tell you how shit you are at something. Funnily enough, the people closest to me had found loving ways to do just that. Whether it be a best friend naming in a graduation letter that I can be “achingly stubborn”, my sister using a reference from one of our favourite book series to illustrate my ability to deeply hurt those closest to me when I get angry or shut them out (“the wrath of Mathura is a goddamn scary one”), or a partner AND a colleague both pointing out that my tendency to withhold my thoughts with the intention of protecting others often does more harm than good, they found ways of communicating the harder truths. Falling in love with myself involves acknowledging these truths, too.
While I’m still working on making sense of the 10 and growing pages of data, there have already been moments that have validated doing this exercise:
- Having people from different parts of my life, on different occasions, highlight the same trait/skill/flaw
- Thinking I have a solid grasp on how my presence affects those around me and having multiple people point out a power that I hold that had completely gone over my head.
- Having people call me in on a trait/skill/flaw that I was aware of, but thought I hid pretty well from the world (whoops!)
- Having people give me the words to name a trait/skill/flaw that I had been struggling to define
- Noticing how the ways in which people describe me has changed or stayed the same over the past seven years. (For better or for worse, “You’re nice” doesn’t make as much of an appearance anymore…)
As I work through this beautiful mess, there are a few things of which I am acutely aware:
- In the process of defining what I am and what I am not, I need to be careful of not limiting what I can be.
- Despite wearing my design researcher hat, the quotes that I chose to record and use as data points were subjectively the ones that I thought would be helpful to this exercise. The question is, why did those ones in particular jump out at me? Is it because they confirmed something I already believed? Or is it because they challenged something I believed? Did it have anything to do with the person that wrote them? While this entire exercise is fraught with opportunities for bias, in understanding my biases and exploring the reasons behind them, I hope to better understand myself and what it is that I want.
I have always believed in letting people know when and how they’ve moved me, and this exercise only reaffirms that belief. Thank you, and you know who you are, for every time you put pen to paper, words to feelings, in order to reflect me back to me. A gem once wrote to me,
“In ways that you’ll never know, your ability to reflect back elements of me that are currently in battle in a positive light is extremely healing.”
Seven months later, I know exactly what they mean.