Why We Forget to Love Ourselves – And How to Start Again

Why We Forget to Love Ourselves – And How to Start Again

I found my old diary last year, from before any of this – before the baby, before the extra weight I still haven’t made peace with. Before I could tell you my child’s school timing faster than my own doctor’s number.

The woman in that diary had opinions about music. She had a favourite chair. She used to sit in it for an hour on Sunday mornings and do absolutely nothing. She never once apologised for it. I read three pages and had to put it down. I couldn’t remember when I’d last done one thing purely because I wanted to, with no one else attached to the decision.

This isn’t really about the diary. It’s about how easily a person disappears into her responsibilities – not all at once, but one small postponement at a time. Eventually, “when things settle down” becomes a sentence you’ve been saying for years.

Why This Happens to Almost Everyone Eventually:

At MyDvija, the people who write to us aren’t only asking about baby milestones anymore. They’re asking about their marriages, their weight, their exhaustion. They’re asking about a body they don’t recognise, a version of themselves they’ve lost track of. The questions are different every time. The undertone is almost always the same one.

• Responsibility expands to fill every space you give it. Most of us keep giving it more space than we have.
• Self-neglect rarely feels like a decision. It feels like a hundred reasonable choices, each one fine on its own, that add up to disappearing.
• Culturally, especially for mothers, self-care can get quietly relabelled as selfishness. It becomes something to feel guilty about, rather than something to protect.
• Grief over who you used to be is real grief, even when nothing catastrophic has happened. You’re allowed to miss her.

WATCH: Shrreya Shah on Rebuilding Yourself, Not Just Your Routine

Where the Neglect Actually Shows Up:

It rarely announces itself. It tends to show up in specific, everyday places instead.

• Your body: weight that feels unfamiliar, energy that never fully returns, a relationship with food that’s become purely functional.
• Your identity: struggling to answer “what do you enjoy?” with anything that isn’t about your family.
• Your relationships: a marriage or partnership that’s quietly drifted while both people were busy keeping everything else running. Sometimes, for some of us, it’s a relationship that didn’t survive it at all.
• Your health: postponing your own doctor’s appointments while never missing your child’s.

None of these are failures. They’re what happens when one person becomes the shock absorber for an entire household, for long enough.

What Self-Love Actually Means – Not the Instagram Version:

Self-love isn’t a spa day or a scented candle, though there’s nothing wrong with either. It’s closer to something quieter and less photogenic: treating your own needs as real, not optional. Not something you have to earn first by finishing everyone else’s.

• It’s eating a meal sitting down, on purpose, at least once a day.
• It’s booking your own health check-up with the same urgency you’d book your child’s.
• It’s saying “I need an hour” without a twenty-minute justification attached to it.
• It’s grieving a body, a marriage, or a version of your life that changed. There’s no need to rush yourself to “get over it” on someone else’s timeline.

Where to Actually Start:

• Pick one thing this week that belongs only to you – fifteen minutes. No productivity attached to it, no explanation owed.
• Reintroduce movement as something that belongs to you, not just a project to “fix” your body. A short walk, alone, counts.
• Say one honest sentence to someone about how you’re actually doing, instead of the shorter, easier version you usually give.
• If your body feels like a stranger’s, start with function, not appearance. What would make today physically easier, not thinner?
• If a relationship has changed or ended, let yourself rebuild slowly. You’re not behind schedule just because someone else’s healing looked different from the outside.

Quick Reference: 

• Self-neglect: rarely one decision – usually a hundred small postponements.
• Self-love: treating your own needs as real, not something to earn.
• Where to start: one small, unexplained thing this week, just for you.

You Don’t Have to Rebuild This Alone:

MyDvija’s Pregnancy & New Mom Meditation Sessions and 100 Days Postpartum Fitness & Weight Loss programme (part of Care Club) were built for exactly this – reconnecting with your body and your own mind, not just managing everyone else’s needs.

If you’d rather talk this through directly, a 30-minute consultation with Shrreya Shah is a good, unhurried place to say the honest version out loud.

Also Worth Reading:

• Am I a Good Parent? Dealing With Mom Guilt.
• Postpartum Depression — Signs Indian Families Mistake for “Just Tiredness”.
• Essential Supplements for Mothers — A Complete Guide to Pregnancy, Breastfeeding & Postpartum Nutrition.

I put the diary back in the drawer, but I kept the chair in mind. Sunday, forty minutes, nothing to show for it afterward. I’ve done it four times now. It hasn’t fixed anything large. It’s just mine again, and that turned out to be the point.

You’re allowed to take something back for yourself. Start smaller than feels meaningful. It still counts.