The hardest person to be kind to
There are days when being gentle with myself feels almost impossible. I pour so much into other people — my time, my care, my patience — and somehow none of it seems to come back.
Raising kids through their rebellious years makes every day feel this way. It’s especially hard with my son. He has traits that make it difficult for him to read other people’s feelings, so he lashes out at me a lot. No matter what I say or do for him, he can be harsh, and there are still plenty of moments when coping with it wears me down completely.
For a long time I mistook self-sacrifice for kindness. I thought making myself small to fit other people’s expectations was what it meant to be a “good” person. Eventually I realized I was just running on empty. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and learning to take care of yourself isn’t a luxury. It’s the thing that makes taking care of anyone else possible at all.
If you’re somewhere in that place right now, I want you to know: I see you, and I’m glad you’re here.
Today’s Words
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.
— Lucille Ball · United States · 20th century
The woman who made the world laugh — and what she knew
Lucille Ball is remembered for her red hair, her wide mischievous eyes, and the way she made millions of people laugh every week on their television screens. She was one of the most beloved comedians of twentieth-century America, and the first woman to run a major television production company. But her life wasn’t just a long string of happy moments.
Before she became famous, she spent years being turned down. She struggled with her confidence, her looks, her voice — the industry kept telling her, in one way or another, that she wasn’t quite right. Her personal life had real pain in it too, including a difficult marriage and the pressure of performing strength for the world while privately working through her own doubts.
Self-love didn’t come easily to her. That’s probably why this small sentence she left behind carries so much weight. It wasn’t said from a place of ease. It came from somewhere harder and more honest than that.
Why ‘love yourself first’ finally made sense to me
The first time I read this, I almost skipped past it. It felt so unfamiliar that I couldn’t quite grasp what it meant. But then my son’s doctor told me something: “The most important thing in a family is for the mother to be smiling.” After I watched that turn out to be true, again and again, I went back and reread the quote. That’s when something in me started to shift. I understood, suddenly, that it was completely true.
There’s a difference between loving yourself and being selfish. I think a lot of us — especially those of us raised in cultures that praise giving and sacrifice — grow up learning those two things are the same. We’re taught early that putting yourself first is something to be ashamed of. So we place ourselves last, over and over, and we call it love.
I’ve come to think of self-love as a kind of self-stewardship. It’s recognizing that you’ve been entrusted with a life, and your job is to treat that life with the same care you’d show a close friend. When we stop chasing outside validation to fill what’s missing inside us, we stop being needy and start being full. And that one shift changes every other relationship we have.
What Lucille Ball is pointing to isn’t arrogance, and it isn’t about ignoring other people. It’s something plainer than that: a basic, steady respect for your own existence. The understanding that you’re worth caring for, the same way you care for the people you love.
When that foundation is missing, everything built on top of it wobbles. We give from a place of emptiness, then feel resentful when no one fills us back up. We make choices based on what others need from us and slowly lose track of what we ourselves want. We look for love and approval outside because we haven’t found it inside yet.
It took time, and a lot of stumbling, before I understood that the love I wanted so badly from other people had to start somewhere inside me. I sat with this alone for years before I could even bring myself to talk to anyone about it. Over the years that followed, I kept hearing the same advice from different people — put yourself first — and eventually I started actually trying it. I realized I didn’t need to be perfect, and I didn’t need to change everything at once. Like a plant turning slowly toward light, I just needed to turn toward myself a little, and be honest about what I was feeling.
That’s what these words mean to me. Not a grand declaration. A quiet permission. Permission to matter to yourself.
How to start loving yourself today, even in small ways
Maybe you found this article because you’re going through something — a relationship that drained you, a version of yourself you’ve been trying to leave behind, or just a long stretch of days where you forgot to be kind to yourself. That’s such a human thing to go through. I don’t think anyone gets through life without losing themselves a little somewhere along the way.
There’s no formula for self-love. If you want to start today but don’t know how, try asking yourself one question before you do anything for anyone else: what do I need right now? It might be as simple as sneaking a piece of chocolate while you cook, taking a slow thirty-minute walk in the park, or saying no to something that drains you. Small, intentional things like this are what a new relationship with yourself is built on. Rest when you’re tired. Go a little easier on your own inner voice.
Maybe these words from Lucille Ball will stay with you. Or maybe they’ll come back to you later, on a different day, in a quieter moment, when you’re more ready to hear them. Either way is fine. You don’t have to be ready today.
From Japan — the art of tending to your own garden
In Japan there’s a quiet tradition called engei — tending a personal garden, even a very small one. It might be a few pots on a balcony, or a single plant on a windowsill. I’ve noticed that people who keep these small gardens don’t talk about them much. They just tend to them every morning — watering, pruning, noticing. There’s something deeply self-respecting in that. You’re saying: this living thing in my care matters.
Often, that living thing reflects yourself back at you. I’ve had a small tree I’ve been caring for about twenty years now, and I’ve realized I can actually gauge my own state of mind by how I feel toward it and the things I catch myself saying to it. Keeping something small and green alive is, I think, a quiet way of remembering that you deserve daily tending too.
My hope for you tonight is that you can treat yourself with just a little more grace than you did yesterday. You’re doing the best you can. That is enough.
