Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others

by Zachary Levi

What they gave me was vital and necessary to my healing process. But because of the clinical and professional barriers, they couldn’t show me love, which was a massive part of what I needed. To be loved. To be shown love. To be guided into the understanding that I am worthy of loving myself. Beth was tuned into God and understood that. Then she made herself available to be the instrument that God used to help me see and feel that more clearly. I think a lot of people go and get treatment, and the reason their treatment doesn’t ultimately hold is because they leave there learning a lot and knowing a lot but still feeling like a piece of shit. They don’t have a person to hold them and say, “You’re loved. You’re worthy of love.” That was certainly the case for me. My deepest ailments, my inability to love myself, my inability to recognize my own self-worth, could only be fixed with love, by another human being loving me in order to show me the way to loving myself.

I’m convinced that all of the issues that we suffer from in this world are rooted in the broken heads and hearts of individuals. If we could go trace all of that down and heal it, we’d be taking care of the planet, we’d be taking care of the animals on the planet, we would be taking care of each other and ourselves. We’d be doing that because we would not be acting out of our unhealed traumas, or allowing ourselves to be led around by our broken egos in a constant state of fearing and fighting, which is ultimately where all our issues lie. But if we can all acknowledge these traumas and seek to heal and free ourselves from them, then perhaps we can start to truly listen to each other, learn from each other, and radically love each other. That is my prayer.