💓🌱 Self‑Love Is Your Father’s and Mother’s Love Inside You: How to Separate Wounds, Choices and Re

1. Life: the first name of your parents’ love

parental love and life

Before any story, fight or absence, there is a raw fact: someone conceived you, carried you and brought you into the world. The name of that basic act is life. Even very immature or absent parents left something in you that no one can erase: half your DNA, half your biological history, half the body that is breathing right now.​

When you say “I never received love,” it is important to separate layers. Maybe you did not receive presence, emotional care, guidance, but the life you carry is concrete evidence that some level of giving existed, however minimal and flawed.

2. Love vs. presence: the knot that confuses everything 🧩

parental absence

Children do not work with complex concepts; they feel. If mom and dad were not there, the child’s brain records: “I’m not important,” “I’m not lovable,” “something is wrong with me.” What was missing often was not love in essence, but consistent presence, visible affection, emotional safety.

Attachment research shows that chronic lack of parental availability tends to create an “abandonment wound” that later shows up in adult life as clingy relationships, fear of being alone and a constant need to please others. It is not drama; it is developmental wiring.

3. The ego’s move: “if they didn’t love me, I won’t love myself either”

self‑love and attachment

When you conclude “my parents didn’t love me,” something inside fires: if the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally failed, I internalize that as a statement about who I am. The ego, to keep waiting for something from parents (or substitutes like partners, bosses, friends), cancels out the loving essence that already exists in you.

Studies link insecure attachment to low self‑compassion and difficulty treating oneself kindly. In plain terms: people who did not feel emotionally held early on tend to struggle more to hold themselves from the inside later.

4. Self‑love as fusion: father + mother = you 💞

self‑love as integration of parents

There is a powerful way to look at this: your father’s love and your mother’s love — expressed in their own limited ways — fuse and become you. Your body, your breath, your nervous system are the result of that joining.​

If you feel you lack self‑love, on some level you may be “kicking one of them out” from inside: “I don’t want to be like my dad,” “I don’t want anything from my mom.” When you reject them absolutely, you cut off a piece of yourself. Integration does not mean romanticizing or excusing everything; it means admitting: “Whether I like it or not, they are part of my roots.”

5. Self‑love is not something you buy; it is something you remember 🧠✨

origins of self‑love

You are not born empty and then learn to love yourself from scratch; you are born with a potential for self‑love that is either nurtured or wounded by the emotional climate at home. Present, emotionally attuned parents help form a kinder inner voice. Distant, critical or chaotic parents tend to plant a harsh inner critic instead.

Adult work is not “creating self‑love out of nothing,” but remembering that it already exists as a possibility, beneath layers of hurt, anger, blame and unmet expectations.

6. Where their story ends and your choice begins 🧭

choice and responsibility

Here we hit a delicate distinction:

• childhood = very little choice, very high vulnerability;

• adulthood = more choice, more responsibility for how you respond to what you were given.

You did not choose whether your father died, left, disappeared into work or addiction, or whether your mother was cold, overwhelmed or absent. That is reality, shaped by their history, traumas and limits. But today you do choose whether to:

• keep repeating inside, “No one stays, no one loves me”;

• or start building a different response by seeking help, therapy, new models of attachment and self‑compassion.

Responsibility is not the same as blame; it is response‑ability — your ability to respond now.

7. Untangling self‑love from emotional hunger in relationships 💔

self‑love in relationships

Without this foundation, it is easy to confuse things:

• thinking self‑love means “needing no one”;

• or the opposite, thinking self‑love means “being so loved by someone else that I finally feel worthy.”

Lack of parental presence increases the risk of entering relationships where you do things you dislike to be accepted, tolerate disrespect to avoid being alone, and constantly mold yourself to the other’s desires. Self‑love is almost the opposite: remembering that your existence is already proof of an original love (life itself), and that no relationship justifies abandoning yourself again.

8. Three questions to separate old wounds from current choices 📝

life choices and responsibility

To help readers distinguish between old hurt and present choice, invite them to reflect on:

1. What was “given” that I did not choose?
   Examples: a missing parent, extreme poverty, violence in childhood.

2. What am I still repeating today, even though I could act differently now?
   Examples: always choosing unavailable partners, never asking for help, living only to please.

3. What is the smallest act of self‑love I can take today that does not depend on anyone changing?
   Examples: saying “no” once, booking a therapy session, writing a letter (maybe never sent) to a parent, acknowledging both the pain and the life you received.

These questions do not fix everything, but they align your inner compass: what is unchangeable past, and what is present‑day choice.

9. Call to action: “mind in the right rhythm” at naveghastore.com 💬

naveghastore mente no ritmo certo

At naveghastore.com – mente no ritmo certo, the aim is exactly this: to help you stop confusing wounds with choices, lack of presence with lack of worth. Each article is an invitation to:

• honor your story without sugarcoating it;

• stop waiting for mom, dad or partners to fix what now belongs to your path;

• rebuild, step by step, a gentler way of speaking to yourself.

💡 Invitation to the reader: share this article with someone who keeps saying, “My parents never gave me anything.” The first crack in that belief might come from seeing that, before anything else, they gave something no one else could: your life.

10. Conclusion: self‑love is when you stop pushing your parents out of your own heart 🫀

integrating parents and self‑love

When you say “I lack self‑love,” you are, in part, saying: “Inside me, I’m still fighting with my parents; I’m still rejecting pieces of where I come from.” Integration is not about forgiving everything or forgetting; it is about recognizing that their love has one undeniable name — life — and that from here on, the choices are yours.

You cannot control what they did or failed to do, but you can decide whether you will spend the rest of your life waiting for an impossible version of them, or whether you will use what you already received as raw material to become the adult who offers yourself the presence that was missing. Self‑love is exactly that: refusing to abandon yourself the way you once felt abandoned, and finally choosing to stay by your own side.