“Self-love is an act of holy disruption.
To love yourself in a world that profits directly from your self-loathing is the ultimate subversion of all that seeks to keep you tame.
We've been taught to hate all that we are (our softness, our fierceness, our not-enoughness, our too-muchness, our tender flesh, our hard bones, our voices, our insatiable hunger, our yearning for more, our aging, our youth, our ugly, our beauty, our all) so that we can be packaged into a commodity that sells us back to ourselves.
Our self-hatred is, in many ways, one of the pillars that capitalism and the patriarchy rely on to keep us small and contained, caged and corralled, safe and quietly in place.
To fall headfirst into a lifelong love affair with our purpose, our passion, our capacity, for pleasure, with the sound of our yes and the tenor of our no. With the reflection in the mirror. With the rich inner landscape of our fumbling and messy aliveness - this threatens the status quo.
As Naomi Wolf said, "Our appetites DO need to be controlled if things are to stay in place."
I don't know about you, but I'm at all not interested or invested in keeping things in place, in maintaining the status quo, in propping up a paradigm that's been trembling on its last legs for far too long.
I don't want to have to tamp down my desire, to contain the embers of my fire, to minimize the heat of my burn.
I want to love myself enough to always ask for more, and then I want to love myself harder so that I can expand wide enough to receive it when it comes. And no, I don’t think this is easy. Or simple. Or even always gentle.
But you loving you?
Like really, really loving you?
It subverts the whole damn thing.
It disrupts the narrative.
It flips the script.
It’s a way to reclaim all that has been taken.
To demand your seat at the table.
To call your wholeness home.”
“Sweetness, the only thing that has power over you is what you can't say, even to yourself. [...] Everything hurt needs sun and air to heal it.”
Source: The Star Side of Bird Hill
“Don't let me ever compete with anyone! If I'm a worm and no man, let me enjoy my life as a worm. Let me stop showing off to anyone... Let me live my life free from the opinions, good or bad, of all other people!”
Source: A Glastonbury Romance
“Nothing is wrong with and never was”
Source: There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate
“Live the journey, learn the lessons, regret not.”
“Pray and invite God to help you deal with the unmoveable mountains. He may not take them away completely, but He can prepare you to climb them as if it were easy.”
Source: Coming to Grips with the Mountains and Valleys of This World
“Acknowledging seemingly contradictory aspects of the self will increase the power and influence you wield in the present, and the vitality, agility and perseverance you can bring to the life tasks that lie ahead.”
Source: The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self--Not Just Your "Good" Self--Drives Success and Fulfillment
“Self-love, at its foundation, is self-acceptance.”
Source: Love Without Cause: Create Inner Transformation, Renew Your Thinking, and Be Love In a World That Doesn’t Deserve It
“I once smoked on a horse. Why? The opportunity just happen to present itself and I just happen to atop a western saddle and it just seemed right.”
Source: Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
“My personal hell is a place filled with loud, cocky, inked hipster—millennials. It’s a place where every guy looks like a member of Mumford & Sons, and all the women shun makeup. No, it isn’t Lollapalooza, nor an Arcade Fire concert. No, it isn’t some hipster independent coffee shop serving the latest trend in cold brewed coffee and a donut. No, not a craft cocktail lounge playing Daft Punk on vinyl while everyone sits on low striped cushions and corduroy couches wearing color schemes of pants and tops that make no sense.”
Source: Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z