I love to read your story. It is wonderful when you keep love, it is the most powerful emotion and can heal anything. Love for me is tainted a bit. For me love is connected to bad memories and good memories. Most of the good memories are memories I made myself with healthy friends. Friends have a lot of things about love to teach us. I dont' want my baby to teach me about love. That is not his job. It sounds like you have learned to love yourself as a mother. I think that loving myself is something I stuggle with, but can relate to learning to love myself as a mother thing.