Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Publication Date: December, 2023
Location: PoetsOnline.org, specifically in the self-love section of the Archive.
Genesis: I’m not a big fan of social media in general, but I do love Clubhouse, the audio-only app. I have made a lot of really good friends on there in the nearly three years since I joined; some I have met, some on more than one occasion, and some have genuinely changed my life for the better.
In the last 18 months or so, I’ve had some truly touching (and unsolicited) feedback from people I really respect. So when PoetsOnline put out a prompt to write a love poem to myself, I took the opportunity to build some of these lovely comments into it. (Quite frankly, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get these out there, in some form or another, for a while. I’ve clearly got something that others recognise, so I may as well flaunt it!)
I don’t tend to ‘big myself up’ very often. I hope you’ll indulge me, just this once.
I tell myself that I don’t need validation. I don’t need you to tell that I’m OK. And G: You have an amazing trait of seeing the great in people and shining a light on it. If people do that at all, there’s always an edge, an agenda. Not with you. when one comes to me, unbidden and unexpected, it moves me deeply, and I try to accept it with grace and A: You have such a rooted, shamanic perspective. humility. I incorporate these valued and valuable insights into my world view, into my view of myself, because O: The ‘Robert Lens’ turned up spontaneously during a psilocybin trip, and it has literally changed my life. I want to honour the person who said this of me, and to me, to honour the fact that they had the courage to tell me what they see, to A: You are older than my parents, but you sound thirty years younger. truly appreciate their loving and heartfelt view of me, and to love me all the more as a result. Some even reveal P: You feel lighter. What happened? There was always a dark sliver in you, which seems to have gone. changes, reflecting them back to me, in real time, Divine spark to Divine spark, messages from the Universe, gently suggesting that I love myself a little more every day.