Someone literally said to me “We can't all wear love glasses like you!” 

What do you think love glasses are exactly? Do you think that the beautiful gradient hues of pink and orange are a bit Pollyanna? 

Pol·ly·an·na

/ˌpälēˈanə/

an excessively cheerful or optimistic person.

"what I am saying makes me sound like some aging Pollyanna who just wants to pretend that all is sweetness and light"

That to me sounds a lot like toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is defined as the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. It's a "good vibes only" approach to life. As a person who has lived in a fear, guilt and shame based mindset growing up this is so harmful. If you are not able to see the “sunny side of life” then you just feel even worse about yourself. We have a full range of feelings and emotions for a reason. We need them to survive. Each one serves a purpose. Toxic positivity is not what we are about.

We are about making a choice in the moment to love yourself and others. When I used to think about loving people I would definitely forget that I was people too. I would do what’s best for someone else and the goal to make them happy even if it was too my own detriment. I did this for years. I wanted to be a “nice” person. That means to never make someone upset. For years I had resentment around so many choices that I had made. I gave people things even when I felt manipulated. People have this amazing trait for asking for things without asking and as an intuitive person I would just “know” that’s what they expected so even though I felt manipulated it was the right thing to do to help that person. A story I share is about when I used to own a retail store and we had beautiful wedding dresses and this woman who I started to befriend was riding with me to do errands one day and she must have mentioned no less than 3 to 4 times that she needed a wedding dress or couldn’t afford a wedding dress. I drove her back to my store on the way home, unlocked it, told her to pick one out to where she proceeded to act all surprised and gushing with fake gratitude. I was so mad. I gave it to her, took her back home and never spoke to her again. I was not strong enough to see past my own anger to think of a better solution that could potentially be win win. Maybe she could work the dress off, maybe she could pay half now and half later. I was just so full of rage at the thought of her asking without asking and making me feel like I should help her!

You know what I realized much later though? This was never about her. As much as I wanted to blame her for her manipulative ways, this was always about me allowing someone to guilt me into doing something that I’m not sure that I wanted to do.

This is what I feel like putting on your love glasses means. Taking a moment in THOSE moments and reflecting on what better choice could you make for yourself and maybe the other person involved but honestly self love is you loving you first. I missed this piece all of my life. Do not forget you. You are such an important part of this equation. You are not an oversight. Put your love glasses on and when you do, don’t forget to look in the mirror!