Hey Laina, hope everything is well. I am a young woman in my 20s, and I am having a hard time loving...

Hi sweetheart. We as humans go through a lot on this earth. A lot of the pain and hard times we experience are often completely out of our own control and they leave us feeling afraid and undeserving of real love and happiness. What you first need to acknowledge and say to yourself everyday is that you deserve to be loved. You deserve to be happy and you deserve to feel secure in that. Of course things are going to happen that are going to upset you in life, but when you can separate these things, and realize that another person’s actions really have not one thing to do with you personally, it’s easy to let those hurtful or annoying things go as opposed to holding onto them and fueling the fear and unhappiness. I come from a family where my father left us when I was really young. That scared me and made me question my own happiness and self love for a large portion of my life and I still am working on it. Luckily my Dad and I have had a chance to rebuild our love and trust and he has shown me the meaning of true personal happiness. Which is accepting yourself for who you are, exactly as you are. Realizing that you do not need one thing or person to make you happy, and that anything another does, does not control your happiness. That only comes from true self love. Let go and stop being afraid of whether you’re perfect or not. You are perfect exactly as you are. Just acknowledge that you are you and there is no one like you in the WORLD. You are here right now on this earth for a reason and that is to be yourself for yourself and for others in your life. We need that. That’s truly all we need, really. Is to be unabashedly ourselves for the world. True beauty and love always comes from that. <3