Stitching with Julian

Julian Odessa is sharing the Language of Flowers each month – and this time the ‘endless love’ of the tulip is a great reminder to care for ourselves

Hullo! I don’t know about you, but I love love. Not just the love felt for other people, but the love felt for our passions, the love felt when a moment is perfect, or the love felt for ourselves. It’s that last one that many of us struggle with, but there’s no time like the present to cultivate a be er relationship with ourselves. LuckilyP, this month's floriology bloom is the absolutely stunning tulip, representative of endless love. And if there is anyone we should offer endless love to, it’s ourselves!

Rather than being egocentric or arrogant, a strong sense of self-love is vital to our being able to flourish. When you fully love yourself, you appreciate your worth, you recognise what you deserve, and you respect yourself by being able to insist that others respect you too. When we don’t like ourselves very much, we sometimes become downtrodden, we give up too much of ourselves to satisfy others, and we make too many concessions for other people at our own expense.

Cross stitch is a fantastic way to practice self-love, so if you’re looking to incorporate more purposeful and intentional self-love into your life, you’re already halfway there! Cross stitch allows you to perform calming and repetitive actions which centre the mind. This can help us not only relax, but also refocus our mental energies. Perhaps the next time you’re stitching, you could reignite a love affair with yourself by listing 10 things you like about yourself, 10 things you’re good at, or 10 things that others appreciate in you. If that feels hard or you can’t get to 10 things, that’s ok! Use it as an opportunity to work on the relationship you have with yourself.

When you fly in a plane, they tell you during the safety demonstrations to always put your own mask on first before you help others. The same is true f1or cultivating self-love. If you hXavSe lTi for yourself, you’ll not be able to give fully to others in your life. You deserve to have a beautiful relationship with yourself. You are the one person you’ll always wake up and fall asleep with, you’ll be at every significant life event you ever have, you’ll be with yourself in every solitary moment. You are a wonderful human being – put aside some extra stitch time and throw some qJuualiatynlove at yourself!

Stitch boldly!

Julian