Learning to love ourselves

Ah the things we lose as we grow older.  It is funny how we are all so eager to grow up and then when we finally get there we wish we could go back to being that child again.  I wonder how much of the draw many have to pagan paths is that desire to connect to the love and acceptance that we had for ourselves and the world during our childhood.  Our paths certainly embrace the connection to the inner child, to ourselves, to our world and to a general acceptance.  That is not to say that perhaps other religions don't offer this also, I just don't know them well enough to comment.  One of the things I do love about my path is that it does force me, as part of my spiritual journey, to really look into myself and to learn once again to accept with complete love who I am.  This is not easy work.  We have learned over and over to judge ourselves, to feel ourselves as something less than we should be.  Sometimes we have gone through events that have taught us to fear and hate our bodies and ourselves, sometimes we suffer illnesses that we have difficulty learning to love as a part of us.  Whatever the root cause, the work involved is often intense, it is a journey, a hard one and a spiritual one.  There are no real answers as to how to do this, for each person it is different.  For me one of the greatest keys is to remind myself of those people in my life who do love me for who I am. if they can do it, why can't I.  Given my path I also try to remember that all things have beauty and all things are divine, therefore I am both beautiful and divine.   It is not our nature to all be the same, how boring would that be anyway, we each have our own unique spark - that inner star- that is solely our own and we should honor it by loving it, by loving us and by casting off fear.