“Love yourself.”

You hear it all the time, but do you ever take it in?

Like breathe in, close your eyes, and fully inhale it? You click on the next miracle “How to be better'”or quick fix for your relationship, but that’s the wrong place to start.

The only place to start is to love yourself first.

I grew up with a dysfunctional family. My mother would do anything to appease my dad—even if that meant allowing herself to be degraded and mistreated (which is quite the norm I’ve learnt from the majority of my friends and their upbringings).

But why is it the norm? Why are we as women told to never give up on our man, or always fix the relationship, and never told to be selfish?

It’s true that our innate miracle bodies create life and have a natural urge to nurture (in reality applies only to some of us). But isn’t it also the perfect excuse for loving others to the extent that we end up hurt and the ones bleeding?

My obsession with being the perfect woman for a man started young. And it didn’t stop when my ex-partners would push me, grab me, or threaten to beat me. I ran many times, but always went back. I was convinced I was just too unlovable to be treated any better way.

Have you ever done that? Accepted being treated poorly and given it an excuse?

It’s so easy to say “don’t”—but don’t. Or at least do, and then learn that you deserve better.

I read that many women every year are killed by their partners, and at one point that could have been me. And that’s the only reason I’m writing this. It’s that I want to warn you that it could be you, if you don’t allow yourself to love yourself (sounds complicated, I know), but the first place to start is to know that you deserve love.

So, Debbie, what really is love then?

Love means being your most vulnerable, authentic self and realising that that naked person deserves love, care, trust, and respect. That person behind the makeup and fake smiles, that person with the messy hair and under-eye bags, with the smelly breath and unwashed dishes, deserves love and is loved.

Love yourself first. The rest will follow.

No, no one is perfect, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. Yes, you are a woman, and no, that does mean you’re a superhuman.

But please, love yourself first.