Even if your parents weren’t perfect, and even if you weren’t raised with unconditional love, and even if your history is full of heartache, the truth remains that whether someone loves you or not has no bearing on how loveable you really are. Your childhood is not the last chapter in your story. Your first love is not your only love. Your greatest heartache is not the whole story of your life. Your parents are not God. An unhappy past, no matter how terrible, is not a reason to say “I am not loveable,” nor is it a reason to stop loving yourself. Actually, it is a reason to love yourself more.
You can only be held back by your past if you use it to reject yourself in the present.
— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 76