Threes and Self-Love

As an Enneatype Three myself, I understand if the idea of Threes needing to cultivate self-love may seem counterintuitive. Many people think we already have an over-abundance of it! And yet…we find ourselves in the middle of the heart center, of all the types most out of touch with our own feelings and heart’s desires.

Each of us has a bit of Three in us, struggling to look good, maintain our self-image, and shifting into whatever form we think might be best perceived by others…sometimes becoming strangers to our very selves.

I love how this poem, Love After Love, invites us to pause and come back into contact with that stranger who “knows us by heart”. What parts of yourself might have become lost along the way? What parts might you have “ignored for another”? May we all allow ourselves the time to pause and reflect on our lives and all of the myriad and beautiful parts of ourselves.

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The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

- Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

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