It’s easy to “love yourself” when, say, your wallet is full, or you’re having a great hair day, or life just generally feels like it’s on your side.

But what about when the sorrows of personal and collective trauma feel like more than you can handle?

Today in The Marcella Principle I share with you why the life-saving practice of self-love might be the most important choice you can make to find a home of inner ballast that weathers every storm.

Because the circumstances of our lives that we might regard as unbearable, unspeakable, and infinitely shameful are the keys that open the gates to an equally unfathomable divine grace—the grail that always overflows and never runs dry.

In the spirit of Fathers’ Day (a holiday I never celebrated), I dedicate this post to the memory of my father, Howard Charles Friel Jr. (1925 – 1972), a man I never knew.

Daddy went to prison when I was 18 months old and died there just before I turned 10.

Years ago, on a solo hike in the deep Sangre de Cristo wilderness, I received a visitation from his spirit where he let me know he had been stuck in an afterlife limbo ever since he died.

I sat in the woods with my hands on my heart and listened.

Would I forgive him, he asked, for abandoning me and my family? For succumbing to the roaring undertow of his addictions?

I sat quietly until a small voice came:

Yes, Howard. Yes, Daddy, I forgive you. And I’ll do what I can to help you move forward.

In keeping that promise, this post is for you, Dad. May you know the love that you are, wherever you are.

Join me for A Pilgrimage to Self-Love, a 4-night retreat in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Southern Colorado, August 13–17, 2025.

Through EFT Tapping, ritual, sacred sisterhood, and deep rest, you’ll reconnect with your body’s wisdom and remember the love that never left you.

Get full access to The Marcella Principle at themarcellaprinciple.substack.com/subscribe