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Melissa Camara Wilkins

Be who you were made to be. Let go of the rest.

Oh Hey, Remember YOU?

You know—the you underneath all those expectations, the you behind the mask? Let’s find THAT you again. Sign up for email updates from Melissa, and get instant access to the Find Yourself mini-course.




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Oh Hey, Remember YOU?

The underneath-it-all, true you? Let’s find THAT you again. Sign up for the email list, and get instant access to the Find Yourself mini-course.




See our privacy policy.

How to Learn to Love Yourself (Really)

Hi M—Hey, can you just tell me, what does “loving yourself” mean? What does that look like? What does it FEEL like? Why do people say it like I’m already supposed to know how to do it??? If I’m bring truthful, it sounds impossible. I have no idea what “loving myself” would be like. HELP.

Hi friend! You know how sometimes big things can seem scary, just because they’re BIG?

Like a humpback whale, say. It’s enormous. It looks like it could swallow you whole. At first glance, you might find yourself thinking something like, “Hi, giant sea monster whale—please don’t eat me, I’m sure I’d be very stringy,” even though you’re not even in the same ocean, you’re just watching it swim through a nature documentary that your kids turned on.

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  • The other day, a friend asked me: What’s one brave thing you’ve done today? (She knew about my Everyday Bravery Challenge, so.)⁣ ⁣ And I bravely told her the truth: I cannot remember a single thing that happened today before now. I went to the grocery store? I sent six million emails (not an exact count)? I definitely drove here in the car. Does that count? ⁣ ⁣ REMEMBERING all the things is hard. ⁣ ⁣ But mostly my brave thing was this: everywhere I went, I brought my whole self along. I didn’t pretend to be okay with things that were not okay. I said yes when I meant yes and I said no when I meant no and I asked for help and I gave myself what I needed. ⁣ ⁣ Being who you are in a world that wants to tell you who to be: I vote that is brave, however you do it. xo.
  • Currently: actually wearing sixteen layers of clothing and pretending to believe shorts-and-tee-shirts weather will ever come again.
  • Stop wondering what would happen and find out. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I mean really, what are the options—rock the boat, or don’t make waves? But there are already waves. It’s just that no one can see them because they’re churning inside of you instead of shaking things up on the outside. You don’t have to hold that storm in.⁣ ⁣ Either the ship will right itself again or you will swim to shore, but either way, you will see what that boat was made of, and you will be who you really are.⁣ ⁣ You are not required to hold the waves of the world. Shake things up and see where you stand.
  • How to love yourself, in one step: choose something that feels like love to you, and then DO THAT THING.⁣ ⁣ This does not have to be hard. Like:⁣ ⁣ 1️⃣ The bed is made. (Making the bed is love for my FUTURE SELF. Afternoon Me is happy when she walks into a room where Morning Me put this ONE THING in order.) (...partly because zero other things are in order.)⁣ ⁣ 2️⃣ I had time to pull out my yoga mat. (Because I made time.) (Like, five minutes. But still.) ⁣ ⁣ 3️⃣ My tea is warm and green and exactly right when I’m ready to sit down. (Because I was WILLING TO REHEAT AS NECESSARY.)⁣ ⁣ You DO the thing first, and the feelings FOLLOW. Love yourself, and then love yourself. That’s how that works. xo.
  • This is what love looks like: 👇🏼 I have a thing for paper. Letterpress, screen printing, block prints: these are my love language. So we have this wall all covered in framed cards right inside our front door—because when something makes you happy, you might as well look at it every day, you know?⁣ ⁣ Once, years ago, when I was in a depression that held on for months, Dane would bring me cards, day after day. He would leave them beside me in the bed I could not get out of, or on the seat of the car when I had an appointment to go to, or at the dinner table where I would sit and not eat.⁣ ⁣ Sometimes I would see them and smile the tiniest bit, and sometimes I would see them and my heart would break for all the ways I could not be present in my own life. But either way, I held them in my hands and knew that I was seen and known and loved.⁣ ⁣ Some of those old cards are up there, all mixed in with the others, the ones we’ve given each other on birthdays and valentine’s days and anniversary days and just-because days.⁣ ⁣ And when I look at the wall, I think: yep. This is how we do things. In this family, we see each other. We tell the truth. We don’t hide from our pain. We don’t pretend like everything is fine, and we don’t pretend like it’s easy. We walk into the hard places, and we chase down our own healing. ⁣ ⁣ Because in this family we do the other stuff, too: we do fireworks and dance parties, we do brownies and hot cocoa, we do puzzles and board games and last-minute trips to the bookstore, we do talking late into the night, over coffee and tea or cinnamon toast. ⁣ ⁣ You can’t have one without the other. You can’t shut down the hard stuff and expect the fun stuff to mean anything. So this is how we do it.⁣ ⁣ Love and truth. Every day.⁣ ⁣ Love you all. xo.
  • I know, it sounds like such a little thing—just being yourself. Just choosing not to be invisible. ⁣ ⁣ And some days it IS easy, but other days it feels basically impossible, because someone else will be disappointed or unhappy or INCONVENIENCED, or because someone might point at your softness or press into your pain or DO WHO KNOWS WHAT—and some days that feels like more weight than you want to carry. (You don’t actually have to carry it.) ⁣ ⁣ I get all that. I’ve done that.⁣ ⁣ But if we make ourselves small so we don’t have to find out what would happen if we brought our whole selves to the table—if we make ourselves small to fit into the box we’ve been given—we end up walking around feeling like we’re hiding behind our own armor. Like we’re pretending at our own lives. We feel unseen. Disconnected.⁣ ⁣ That is a life half-lived, loves, and we are not here for it.⁣ ⁣ So yes, I’m going to keep saying it. You were not made to be invisible. You are ALLOWED. As you are. (So is everyone else. This isn’t you INSTEAD OF them, this is you ALONGSIDE OF everyone else.) ⁣ ⁣ Be here. Come and be you, with us.

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Melissa Camara Wilkins