Dear friends,
Have you ever thought about the importance of loving yourself? Self-love is a journey of rediscovering oneself in a world that asserts its own opinion on who you and I should be. It’s no easy feat to heal from the hurt and labels that categorize and bond each of us into rigid expectations of what and how we should each behave.
Healing and developing love for others start from within. Life is about adversity and its very blessing is self discovery and rediscovery. It allows us growth and to fall in love with oneself all over again… to be able to have a voice and reclaim that we do matter. Below, I pen a poem about my own experience with this crucial process.
How can I love myself more
Without letting this ego enter through the door
How can I love myself more
Finding a way to love this broken world like once before
How can I love myself more
Putting a new you in my life and falling once more
With love,
Alia
Alia AlShamsi is an Emirati-Italian former photojournalist and university adjunct faculty. She published her first book Alayah with a publishing grant from Dubai Culture and Art Authority, and a second book Night/Day, which is one of the first three Silent Books published in the country, an initiative launched by UAE Board on Books for Young People. She has since moved into poetry and continues to write in both English and Arabic. Follow Alia @AliaAlShamsi.
Illustration by Alia Al Shamsi