Our Story

Dear Reader,

To start off, I wanted to take the time to say thank you for visiting our store and seeing what we’re all about. I’m sure you may have a few burning questions as to how we came about, so if you’d like to hear the backstory, please continue on to the next paragraph…

In April 2024, I signed up for a retreat in Bali which focused on personal development and socializing. To say this week was intense is an understatement, but I left Bali with clarity, a re-calibrated perspective on life and new priorities. Although this retreat (most definitely) left a new and improved emotional and psychological imprint, there was one blaringly loud void that was brought to the surface. Self-love. I had known for years that I needed to work on self-love but I brushed it off as there were always more important tasks to complete. But now, it had been thrust to the forefront of…well…everything…

During the retreat, we were asked to write a love letter about ourselves, to ourselves. As soon as I heard this task my heart sank and anger rose…rage was intertwining its fiery aura throughout the lattice of my soul as heat was radiating off and vibrating back through the fabric of my body (I know, I know…it’s poetic…I can’t help myself, I have to throw it in there). I sat in my chair in tears, and watched every other person in that room write paragraphs and paragraphs and PAGES about everything they loved about themselves and all I could write was “Dear…” and could barely put my own name on the page. I couldn’t think of anything to write…To put this in another light, I was unable to think of ONE thing, anything, about myself that I genuinely admired, loved or even just liked. As emotionally confronting as this particular experience was for me, I could no longer ignore the fact that my self-love was in desperate need of attention.

A few months after I got back from Bali, I was sitting in my university lecture about psychedelics and our lecturer asked us if anyone had any questions. I was hesitant but I raised my hand and asked if psychedelics were present in cane toad poison and if so, how that worked…I was met with giggles and comments from other students and the lecturer said he was unsure but would look into it…I left that lecture feeling a little embarrassed and pretty stupid. The following week I was sitting in the same lecture and, to my surprise, the first slide on the PowerPoint presentation was “Psychedelics in Cane Toad Poison”. Although there was still a giggle here and there, the lecturer reassured us that there were psychedelics in cane toad poison which involved complex chemical interactions and he admitted he fell down a bit of a rabbit hole whilst researching this. For the rest of that lecture and as I was walking to the train station afterwards I felt my confidence rise a little knowing that I wasn’t stupid or crazy, my question had some real logic behind it.

About two weeks later I was lying in my bed still trying to rack my brain for ideas on how to re-establish healthy levels of self-love. The experience at university began to wander through my mind and then the puzzle pieces slowly came together.

I had recently lived through an experience that irrefutably reinforces that I CAN and SHOULD trust myself.

When experiencing emotionally low or triggering times I was always unable to retrieve these kinds of experiences from memory to remind myself that there ARE reasons why I love myself, there ARE reasons why I should be confident and there ARE reasons why I am a valuable person.

light-bulb moment

What if I start writing down these lived experiences as they arise throughout life so when I am experiencing an emotionally low or difficult time I have already built my own safety net of evidence….this would also mean that:

1. I won’t have to RELY on other people to pull me out of emotionally low times. (Side note: I absolutely still encourage you to reach out to people if you are struggling but now as you build your own evidence you may no longer feel you have to completely RELY on them.)

2. My brain is unable to dispute the reasons I have written down because they’re lived experiences and…

3. I can no longer use time as an excuse not to work on these core parts of myself because even with a busy lifestyle it’ll only ever take a few minutes (max) to write the experience down.

I immediately jumped in my car and drove to my nearest shopping center and bought 3 small glass jars for: self-love, self-confidence and self-worth. When I came home I decorated them with stickers and cut out small rectangular pieces of paper to begin writing down all the experiences and characteristics about myself I recognized that I liked.

And that was the day Dear Me Love Me was born

Love,

The Founder and CEO of Dear Me Love Me