The Tribune

By JEFFARAH GIBSON

Tribune Features Writer

jgibson@tribunemedia.net

A NEW project, “I Must Love Myself Enough”, is designed to help women realise that they are “all that and a bag of chips”.

The project will launch this Saturday at 9am, at Eve’s Journey, the Believers Gospel Chapel, dedicating a full day for women to love themselves, uncover the truth about past hurts, and throw away baggage in order to have healthy relationships with themselves and others.

“I Must Love Myself Enough” is the brainchild of life coach, Stanya Davis, who is also the founder of Eve’s Journey. She said she had witnessed women struggle to overcome personal issues on a daily basis that had hindered healthy themselves and relationships with others.

Instead of just observing these struggles, Ms Davis wanted to do something more practical that would help women.

She said the only way a woman could truly be whole was by serious introspection and finding the root of problems.

The one day “I Must Love Myself Enough” event is designed to do that. While Ms Davis believes it is impossible to solve all problems in one day this Saturday will help fuel a life of positive change, she said.

“Women need to first have healthy relationships with themselves before they can have healthy relationships with others. This event is really for women who have forgotten to remember who they are. This event is a like a self help book come to life. We want women to be healed,” said Ms Davis.

Ms Davis said were many factors in society that had shaped and formed the unhealthy views women have of themselves and their relationships with others.

“There are so many dysfunctional relationships. In our society it is expected to be in a relationship with someone who is unfaithful. It is expected to be with a man who is abusive. Because of all of this and maybe their experiences as a child, some women do not know their value or their worth. Then sometimes when we are in relationships, we complain that men do not know what to do. But that is not the case all the time because some women have baggage that they carry into relationships,” she told Tribune Woman.

Contrary to what many women may believe, Ms Davis said loving oneself is more than splurging on a shopping trip, or going to an expensive restaurant.

“It is deeper than all of that. Women must love themselves first and foremost because God made them, they must love themselves enough to know that it is not okay to be with a man who is unfaithful, they must love themselves enough to forgive those who have wronged or hurt them,” she said.

She said of the workshop:

“You will laugh, you will cry, but in the end you will be healed. We will take a look at the past, take a look at worth in terms of money. Some women feel as though they are not worth that much so they stay on jobs where they are treated unfairly. At the end we hope women are empowered and apply everything they learn into their daily lives.”