Welcome to Mimi Shannon’s Mirror Mirror Blog. The Mirror Mirror blog is a place of self-love. You will find support, inspiration and practical tools for loving yourself. My hope is it ignites your own “wake up and smell the coffee” call to take the next steps to living a life of self-love and all that it brings.
I’m sure you are familiar with that [sometimes] annoying quip, “wake up and smell the coffee”. Well recently, the Universe, in the guise of friends, acquaintances and a series of synchronicities, has been persistently calling me out until I woke up and smelled the proverbial coffee! I’m no stranger to this often not so subtle technique of getting one’s attention. In this case, it smelled good; the message was clear and the invitation simple but compelling. In short, it said that I had underestimated what I have to offer for too long, had practiced more than enough and was ready to take my place at the head of the table. For once, I didn’t protest. Instead, I agreed.
In the past, I don’t know how many times I’ve said to clients that even with tons of support, the journey to ourselves is an inside job. No one can do it for us. But, being human, sometimes we get in our own way and need a gentle nudge, a firm push or even a swift kick in the ass to help us get unstuck. Because of my history, coupled with my stubbornness and independent, cowgirl attitude, this has been the case for me more often than I like to admit. I bought into the no pain, no gain school of hard knocks myth and spent a lot of time learning the hard way. But, fortunately, over the years I’ve gotten quicker and better at reading the early signals (which are usually fairly benign) before all hell breaks loose and the Universe resorts to the big stick approach.
So, with that in mind, starting with this post, I have decided to take a bold step, come out of hiding and take my place…as a woman in her SHINE, as a survivor of incest, self-hatred and three critical illnesses, as a champion for the expressed feminine, as an inspirational writer and a teacher, and as an expert on self-love. I have a story to tell whose time is now. Why?…because while painful, it is universal.
Our stories may differ in characters and events but in reality they aren’t different. Everyone is looking for a way out of their pain. Everyone is looking for a way to do more than survive. Everyone is looking for a way to feel good about themselves and live lives that feel good. Everyone is looking to connect, to feel safe, to come home. Everyone is looking for that elusive butterfly called happiness. Everyone is looking for love. While my story isn’t easy to hear, let alone tell, it is a story with a happy ending and a gift for all of us…self-love. Learning to love myself literally saved my life and it can turn yours around too, if you let it. It is the answer to everything above.
Through self-love I healed my body, my mind, my heart and my soul. Through self-love I have restored the years that were eaten by self-hatred and made myself new. Through self-love I have resurrected my light and let it SHINE. Through self-love I have remembered who I really am. Through self-love I can see that, for the most part, it is the missing ingredient to peace and prosperity. It has taught me that we can’t really love one another until we have learned to love ourselves and as we do, the seeds of inner peace grow stronger, eventually growing through us and out into the world. Further, as we discover and live our own inner wealth then the prosperity we all dream of shows up easily and effortlessly.
A great man once declared, “I have a dream” and that dream echoed in peoples’ hearts no matter their race, religion, age or gender. It was a unifying force to be reckoned with. It called us to action, helped us to believe the impossible was possible and to connect to that which was greater than ourselves. Born out of his brutal story, his dream changed history.
Self-love is no less of a dream. In fact, it is the access point, the gateway to manifesting MLK’s dream on another level…for once you achieve inner equality through self-love, outer equality naturally follows suite. This is a gift we can give one another, the world and ourselves.