Self-Love Is Personal. What Does It Mean For You?

It’s 2021 when I wake up and my feet hit the ground, causing the wood panels to creak beneath me as I make my way to the bathroom. I brush my teeth. Wash my face. Look into the mirror. Look past my eyes and say to myself, “Good morning, beautiful woman.” Then I smile three times and walk out. For three months, this was one of my morning rituals. A gift. Small, yet effective one.

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I moved to Los Angeles for a job. This job actually, working at LAist Studios, 3,000 miles away from my family and everything I knew. I was out here in L.A. alone. Living alone. During the pandemic. And I would wake up every morning with this indescribable hole in my heart. A deep emptiness. I didn’t know what it was. But I knew I had to fill it with something. With someone. With myself.

Every morning I would write in a small journal of goals, “I will fall madly in love with myself.”

Listen to Episode 9 of WILD

But what did that mean, really? I didn’t actually know. But as I wrote it down day after day, morning after morning — there was a wholeness inside of me I wanted to hug. And I started asking myself: How do I love myself as a whole person? My strengths and my flaws? How do I love all the parts that make me Megan Tan?

Self-love is personal.

Jor-El Caraballo

“I like to think of self-love as a collection of actions as opposed to just the feeling,” Jor-El Caraballo says. Caraballo is a licensed therapist, co-founder of Viva Mental Health, and the author of The Shadow Work Workbook: Self-Care Exercises for Healing Your Trauma and Exploring Your Hidden Self. He says it's important to first become aware of the parts of you that get in the way of self-love. Like the inner critic in your head. And then practice how to treat yourself with care and compassion.

How you love yourself will be unique to you, just like it was unique to the character Erick in WILD Season II: I Think I’m Falling In Love.

This season, the show masked itself as a fictional romantic comedy. But it shares a deeper message of one man learning to love himself, in order for him to attract the love he deserves.

Because self-love is so personal, I wanted to ask two of the voice actors from WILD about an event in their lives that forced them to learn how to practice self-love.

Melinna Bobadilla (Luna)

“As an actor, you have to deal with a lot of rejection. And it's not similar to career rejection because as an artist, as actors who are bringing to life the stories of other humans, we constantly have to get in touch with the darkest, most vulnerable, painful, and uncomfortable parts of ourselves.

That's an expectation. That's just baseline. You're not just evaluated for your talent, you're evaluated for things you cannot control, like your physical appearance.

Melinna Bobadilla voices the character "Luna" in season two of the WILD podcast.

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Courtesy of Melinna Bobadilla

)

One year, after a few different heartbreaking rejections, I started to question my talent, question my value, question my worth, question if I had even made the right decision to go down this path. And I started feeling depressed. I also started realizing that what I was doing for work was suddenly taking control of my emotional well-being and of my mental health.

I started realizing that I could not allow the entertainment business and my career as an actor to have a chokehold on my happiness.

I had to throw myself a lifeline and say, 'OK, who is Melinna outside of this? Who was Melinna before I started getting TV and film roles?' So I basically had to stitch together these reminders of other places where I get joy and I get fulfillment.

One of the things that became sacred to me — and I credit my partner for this — is going to nature.

I became a camper around 2016-2017. Nature cleanses me and gives me peace and makes me feel like I am really loving myself, loving my spirit, loving my emotions, loving my heart. It's almost like I get to jump into another realm that is fully filled with love and that’s nature. Camping in the Sequoias, that for me is like a kind of spiritual retreat.

Also, I’ve learned to be very happy with my own company. Eating what brings me joy, going where I get joy. I’m very happy in my solitude.

And I think that's part of self-love. Knowing how to be happy alone.

Self-love is still an ongoing process. It's reminding myself that I'm not a commodity that exists only for external approval.”

Gabrielle Ruiz (Angela)

“There have been many experiences where I realized if I didn't take care of myself and if I didn't love myself, no one else would.

I'm a dancer, singer, and actor, in no particular order. I have learned in my 20-year career span that self-love needs to be first in the practice of my art because not only will people run over me, but I'll run over myself.

Gabrielle Ruiz voices the character "Angela" in season two of the WILD podcast.

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Courtesy of Gabrielle Ruiz

)

As a dancer, there were times when I would get injured and it would crush me emotionally, spiritually, and physically, and I would still try to perform. I would still try to do it for the company. I would still try to get myself on stage and I had no idea how miserable I was. How devoted I was to everyone else, except to myself.

There finally was one moment. One of the last off-Broadway shows I did was Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story, and I was a part of the creative process with the choreographer. I was at my prime in the Broadway community, and I experienced an injury.

I remember going to the theater and realizing that I was so petrified to perform, food tasted like dirt. I wasn't enjoying not only the simple pleasures of life, but the simple necessities of life.

I sat in my dressing room and I asked the ensemble women around me to stand up, hold my hands, and pray for me because I needed help. I couldn't go on stage without the help of others around me and asking for that help and for that emotional intervention. It was a huge moment of self-love for myself.

When I avoid food or when food starts tasting like dirt, that means I need to check myself and I need to start figuring out what's really the root of the issue. It could be stress, it could be an injury, it could be the project's not right, the people are not right, this is not where I'm supposed to be right now.

It's a psychological thing. I finally took a moment when I realized that was the switch. I love myself by being well nourished.”

Megan Tan

By the end of 2021, I added a few more rituals of self-love into my routine. Every night before I went to bed I would write out a little story to myself called: “Remember When.”

“Remember when … you moved across the country by yourself. You figured out and paid for all of the logistics to ship your car, your stuff, and you found the apartment of your dreams in a week after almost getting hit by a car while walking across the street. That’s who you are.”

“Remember when … you would wake up in the mornings with a hole in your heart and you learned how to fill that hole with love, of you, by you, for you? That’s also who you are.”

How do I find the WILD podcast?

It's now available from LAist Studios. Check it out wherever you get your get podcasts! Or listen to the ninth episode in the player above.