Hey,
I thought we could talk about loving ourselves this week?
According to the dictionary, self-love is defined as:
Love of self: such as
a: an appreciation of one's own worth or virtue
b: proper regard for and attention to one's own happiness or well-being
I can’t remember the exact age when being kind to myself became so damn hard but a couple of years ago I decided that I needed to give it some attention. And so I embarked on a ‘Year of Self-Love.’ Which basically meant that I bought tons of books, spoke about it relentlessly, thought about it a lot and wrote about it even more.
Oh my goodness was it hard. Is it hard! Decades of re-wiring to be done. Decades of living in a patriarchal society, magazines, television, advertising, more social situations than could ever be counted, plus pivotal relationships, and the rest.
It’s hard to love someone when you come to it late. Actually, it’s not. It’s really easy to love someone, whatever and whenever the time. But it’s hard to get to the point where you feel able to let go of the things you’ve been told, the times when you’ve been hurt, where you’re able to believe, I suppose, that this type of love might possible for you again.
Children can teach us how it’s done. They love themselves entirely and unconditionally and therefore they love with the same ferociousness.
Ok, so it needs a bit of channeling and the supermarket checkout isn’t ideal for that tantrum because they’re tired and hungry but don’t doubt that little kids know their own needs and are gonna make themselves heard. You’ve got to give them credit for that?!
When my five-year-old gives in to his lethargy at bedtime and tells me that he loves me I know that he has never meant anything more.
The love that you get from kids is real. It’s so damn full. So complete. And I think that’s why it feels so good, this undistracted, full-body, no-limits love. It’s so expansive. I know that a similar sort of love and devotion can come from pets too.
I used to look after myself because I thought that I had to teach my kids this. The requirement for self care. Particularly as a woman. I wanted them to see first hand what tending to your own needs looked like. And so I’d justify sitting down to read my book or saying no to testing my pelvic floor on the trampoline (there was no testing needed, we all know how that would end up). But this only got me so far.
Because later on in the day I’d get angry and frustrated because I hadn’t kept good boundaries. Or I’d sneak in a sly comment to my husband about how a pair of jeans made my bum look awful. I thought that I could just love one bit of myself and that would be enough. But no, I’m learning that you need to go all in. I need to love my squashy thighs, the way I am always (nearly but not quite) late, my constant fear of getting things wrong, all of it. I need to love myself not in-spite of these things, but because of them. And that is, I’ve found, a fairly big ask. Doing it for someone else doesn’t work. You can’t short circuit the system. If you really want to do it for them, then you have to not do it for them. You have to do it for you.
And my kids never needed teaching how to love themselves anyway, they were born with, ‘proper regard for their own wellbeing’. Instead, what they needed teaching was how to stop the world from stripping away that intuition. And, it turns out, I need help with this too.
I had been known to quote, “you need to love yourself first in order to spread more love in the world.” But if I’m honest, I was repeating something I’d read that sounded about right. I’m not sure I truly understood why.
But once you love yourself, you stop obsessing about yourself and discover an ease, an acceptance.
It sounds counter-intuitive but it’s not. I realised that I was so busy thinking about myself that I couldn’t really see other human beings. Not in an unkind way. It’s just that when you are so conscious of your clothes being right, your body looking a certain way, your work sounding interesting, your opinion being validated, it’s pretty tiring and all-consuming. This is very much not the fault of women (or purely a problem that women face) and nor am I suggesting that loving ourselves more is the only answer / quick fix - there’s a whole conversation about the systems of patriarchy and capitalism and the beauty industry that we could have here. But I do think that for this reason self-love can be a form of rebellion, can be viewed as resistance.
I don’t rest just so that I can be of service to others, I rest so I can be of service to myself. And then yes, it follows that in learning this sort of love, I can then tap into it in order to serve others better.
All this might sound pretty selfish but I don’t think it is. It’s so much the opposite of selfish. When I love myself and am kind to myself I have less negativity full stop, for myself and others. I do my best work and in turn, my best work goes out into the world. From what I observe, the people starting the fights are full of self-loathing. I want to be full of self-love. I want my children to be full of self-love. I know it’s so much more complicated than this but I think the world would be safe in the hands of loving people.
Self love is saying - I am enough as I am, right here, right now. It’s asking - how about you? Let me see you. If you haven’t got enough love right now, have some of mine.
Life feels far more enjoyable when you lean into loving yourself more.
The more I keep working on this, the better things get.
Unfortunately, some of the people who seem to have this super-power don’t put it to good use. I’m thinking of some of the narcissistic white men in positions of power. But I have never met a woman who has this problem. If you are a woman who has ever worried about sounding like you love-yourself too much then you most definitely do not love-yourself enough. I would like to see a world where more women love themselves a whole lot more. Often-times, when this does happen there is a tendency to push back down. She’s dangerous in that place. She’s a bit too much - here’s another poem I wrote in response to that assertion.
And so I’m working on being a whole lot more myself, and loving every single bit.
This may well be a lifetimes work-in-progress. That’s the way it currently feels anyway. I am still writing about it. Still figuring out what it really means. Still working on it. This very much isn’t a post teaching the how, but rather tracking the journey.
I’ve learnt that so much stems from these small words. I love my body a whole lot more nowadays. I’ve allowed myself to be more vulnerable. I love my enthusiasm for life. I’ve even learnt to give myself a hug when I need one (there’s some science behind this!) But I don’t love my crooked teeth. I don’t love my anxiety. My work is not done.
The challenge is to love yourself like you used to before the world started telling you that you were unlovable.
And I am trying. I am trying to start from a place of love nowadays. I’m trying to love myself the way I love others.
I thought I’d let you know.
Incase you were trying too.
Here’s the poem that arrived this week, inspiring this post:
Five ways to love yourself:
1. Like you would an expensive cocktail. Sip yourself, all £5 a mouthful slow. Laugh out loud at your sweet one-liners, raise an eyebrow at the sour twists of your mind, shaken and stirred up this menu-worthy concoction is hard earned and we all know there’s no, ‘one more for the road’.
2. Like Beyonce. Crazily. Like the lady with pink hair who loves cats and gives off unhinged, “no shit” vibes, who also likes dogs, because, why wouldn’t you like dogs, like dogs when they first hear that turn of a key in the front door. Like sacking off work to go to the beach for the day. A Monday. A nothing-much-to-say Monday spent with one eye sunshine-squinted, an ice cream becoming the only thing blocking your sky.
3. Like a mother peeling off a plaster, soak the source of your soreness in warm water before taking it second, by, second. Pause, if it gets too much. Pause until there’s enough healing to contain the gush before stitching art using the threads of old scars. Carry a spare bandage in your pocket. Know who will help to apply gentle pressure, if required.
4. Like every cell of your body is hot for each other. Wear that outfit, won’t you. But, what will people say? Never know because you only have eyes for yourself.
5. Like you do your mates. When you hear it mentioned that you’ve been a bit crap lately, say, “give her some slack, she’s been having a hard time,” say, “I won’t hear a bad word said about her,” say, “she’s pretty awesome you know, I have a massive crush on her.” Say that. And mean it.
Your writing prompt for this week:
I thought it would be fascinating and powerful to all write some poetry on the topic of self-love?
A topic that I feel is vast and compelling. And influential?
Are you irritated by the insipidness of the self-care industry? Do you struggle to fall in love with your flaws? Is there one part of yourself that you’ve cherished and what was the result? Do you find it a learning curve or are you great at it? What helps? What doesn’t? Is there something that angers you about this topic? Or do you fancy writing something tender?
You could use questions like these to ‘write your way in’ (thanks
- I’m using this term regularly nowadays), or just wait and see what arrives. Pick a form of your choice. Let’s write some poetry.Looking forward to Friday already,
Nelly x
P.s Some bits of this weeks letter were taken from an old post I wrote on this topic (it was twelve months ago and from my other Substack - Journaling the Wild). Hopefully you don’t mind me borrowing some words.
I have never stolen anything
From another person.
But I have robbed myself
Of a love that used to
Flow like a river.
And I don’t even know
How to build a dam.
Ps. Loved your poem 5 ways to love yourself!