Your Radical Self-Love Toolkit
Your Radical Self-Love Toolkit
You Are Not a Car
Some of us, before this whole conversation about radical self-love, didn’t so much hate our bodies as we engaged them like they were vehicles, like a car we drove around. We paid only as much attention as was absolutely necessary to get the car started and get on with our day. We put gas in the car so we didn’t end up stuck on the side of a deserted highway or on some backwoods road out of a horror film. We occasionally took the car to the shop if it seemed like something extreme was up. Sometimes we trashed the car, littering the passenger seats with wrappers and water bottles. Some of us went for months without visiting a car wash. We would awaken, get in our cars, and go, navigating our lives while giving very little thought to our vehicles until we needed them again.
This model was not sustainable. There are some key differences between a car and your body, the primary one being that should you wake up and find that your car won’t start, you will either (1) buy a new car, or (2) find a new mode of transportation. Should you find that your body won’t start, we can safely assume you didn’t wake up. To treat our bodies like cars is to essentially treat ourselves like something disposable. You, my love, are not disposable. Besides, your body wants nothing more than to be your buddy through this ride called life, and that means you need a solid set of tools for the road.
Ten Tools for Radical Self-Love
Over the last four chapters we have laid out the concepts and theories that undergird a radical self-love framework. We’ve combed the innermost realms of our beliefs, illuminated the structural and systemic biases of our societies, excavated our personal body shames and judgments, and contemplated a planet without body terrorism. Awesome! But radical self-love is not merely conceptual; it must be practical if it is to be transformative. The four pillars of practice offered us a thinking, doing, and being model for leading a radically self-loving life. Associated with each pillar are specific tools and practices you can begin working on today to revolutionize the way you live and love in your body.
Pillar 1: Taking Out the Toxic
Tool 1: Dump the Junk
On any given day we may find ourselves in our local grocery store waiting in line to buy organic kale chips, when we feel the energetic tug of the current fashion or tabloid magazine calling to us from just above the Orbit gum. Of course we want to know why Kim Kardashian put hubby Kanye West out of the house last week, and of course we need to know the Five Secrets to Solving the Sin of Cellulite. Before we are even consciously aware of it, we are handing the cashier a twenty-dollar bill for kale chips, Kim K, and diet tips. Getting sucked into the vortex of escapism is alluring. Wanting to dive headfirst into anyone’s life besides our own is certainly understandable, but that mini mental vacation is not without cost. The content we are exposed to impacts us. Whether we like it or not, we are taking in toxic messages.
Is the answer to swear off all media and adopt a monastic life? No, not unless you are into that sort of thing. But we can be intentional about the media we ingest, and we certainly do not have to give our hard-fought dollars to industries that profit from self-hate and body terrorism. “Dump the Junk” is a tool for detoxifying our daily lives from mass-media body shame. Ducking every awful message lobbed at us via television, radio, and internet is unrealistic. We are humans living in the world. Nevertheless, we can be intentional and strategic about how we engage with media. Toxic media creates a cumulative effect of body shame that erodes our sense of self and places a scrim of distrust and scrutiny on the bodies of others over time. Dumping the junk turns down the high-decibel volume of body-negative messages, creating some space for us to assess our own bodies and the bodies of others with less background noise.
Unapologetic Inquiry #24
Do you feel unsure exactly how much body-shame and body-terrorism content you are absorbing weekly? To sort through the static, try on this question: what am I watching that contributes to the oppression of my body by making bodies like it bad, wrong, a joke, invisible, dehumanized, a caricature, shamed, etc.?
To actively dump the junk, consider a media fast. Commit to one day per week when you actively choose not to engage in television, radio, or social media content that reaffirms negative messages about bodies. If you’re flipping through the channels and land on Real Housewives of Pluto… change it. Reading a magazine with an ad for how to lose those “stubborn ten pounds”… set it down. Hearing radio ads offering you plastic surgery… turn it off. Do you have a job in which you must engage with the media? Spend time interrogating the messages. What is the content asking you to believe about your body? What is it asking you to believe about other folks’ bodies? Notice your thinking after your media fast. How do your mind, body, and spirit feel? Fill your time with new areas of interest, complete unfinished projects, spend time with friends. You just gave yourself fifteen extra hours a week. That’s what you call radical wealth!
Tool 2: Curb Body Bad-Mouthing
Does the following scenario sound familiar? Two friends are in a clothing store trying on potential purchases, when friend 1 says, “OMG, I look like a cow in this!” In response to that self-effacing comment, friend 2 retorts, “No you don’t. You look great! Now, I would look like a cow in that!” The two friends proceed to volley mutual accolades over fitting-room doors, all the while tossing darts of body insults at themselves. We call this friendship.
Our society has formed a sense of cultural camaraderie around body shame that dictates we affirm one another at the expense of ourselves. This is a menacing mechanism of body terrorism. In a society that applauds our ability to make ourselves literally and figuratively smaller, it is no surprise we employ this strategy within our social relationships. How often are we asked to shrink ourselves in size, presence, and power? To be bold and unapologetic is to quickly be maligned as cocky, arrogant, or worse. Couple this with the capitalistic model of scarcity that supposes there is not enough money, space, time, or love for us all, and it is no wonder we find ourselves abdicating our personal power to uplift our friends. What happens when we toss out that tired model and stand unapologetically in our power? We not only embolden ourselves but also inspire those we love to do the same.
Radical Reflection
Self-deprecation is valued as a sign of wit in today’s culture. Comedians Louis C.K. and Amy Schumer have risen to great fame on the backs of their perceived flaws and inadequacies. Unfortunately, this brand of humor also makes it easier to make fun of others.
Singer/songwriter Jill Scott did exactly that in the concert documentary Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.1 In the film, Scott is being interviewed by a reporter in the green room while her industry peer Erykah Badu is lighting up the stage with her performance. The reporter and Jill gush over Badu for a moment, praising her prowess. Then the reporter asks Scott whether she’s nervous in light of the fact that she must follow Badu’s performance. Jill Scott’s response was as apple-pie sweet as it was guillotine swift: “Have you ever seen me perform?”
Scott did not see shirking her power or shrinking her talent as a prerequisite for appreciating and supporting a fellow artist. She was unapologetically clear that owning her gifts in no way diminished Badu’s. Radical self-love does not call on us to be less of ourselves. Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.
How we speak about our bodies impacts how we experience our bodies. Language can be a tool for body terrorism or a tool for radical self-love. Pejoratively using words like fat entrenches body shame into our psyches, impacting how we see and treat fat bodies. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Body activist, author, and fabulous friend Jes Baker articulates this sentiment in her book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls:
Saying I’m fat is (and should be) the same as saying my shoes are black, the clouds are fluffy, and Bob Saget is tall. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it…. We don’t need to stop using the word fat, we need to stop the hatred that our world connects with the word fat.2
Curbing body bad-mouthing is the perfect tool for moving our self-deprecating language from the default of constantly running background noise to a body-shame language we recognize and interrupt as often as possible.
Unapologetic Inquiry #25
Notice the words you use to describe yourself negatively. Which words do you hear others using as insults? Consider words like fat, crazy, gay, black, blind. Keep track of how often you casually use these terms. Make a list of some body-shame-free alternatives.
Pillar 2: Mind Matters
Tool 3: Reframe Your Framework
Did you know that your body is not the enemy? I know how difficult this concept can be when we feel as though we have been at war with our bodies for our entire existence, but this is a case of friendly fire, folks, and we are usually the shooters. Think back to your last cold or flu. Chills, fever, scratchy throat, fatigue, that crusty stuff that builds around your… you get the picture. Awful, right? And it is our mean old body’s fault! After all, the body is working overtime to disperse those white blood cells to the site of the virus, attempting to squash its insidious attack on our immune system! Awful, mean old body, right? Wrong. Feeling crappy when we’re sick is not a sign of a body that is mutinying; it’s the unfortunate byproduct of a body working exponentially hard to return us to wellness. Our body is fighting on our behalf even as we curse it as though it were a cheating lover.
Practicing “Reframe Your Framework” can be confounding for those of us navigating chronic illness or gender nonconformity. Feeling trapped in a body that does not feel like it has your best interest at heart assuredly makes sense. It is hard to love a vessel that appears to be the author of significant pain. What a terrifying experience to wake up in constant pain or in a body that does not feel in alignment with who you know yourself to be. It may very well feel like your body is against you. Remember that this is a thinking, doing, being journey, and we will need to try on new beliefs and actions in the service of radical self-love. With tool 3 in mind, we are invited to ask ourselves, “What peace, power, or joy can be gained by deciding that this body I am inextricably tied to for the rest of my life is my enemy?” If there is no access to peace, power, or joy in your current framework, then it simply doesn’t serve you.
In a 2015 article on the website XOJane, author and clinical social worker Kai Cheng Thom pens what she calls “a love letter between a woman and her body.” She challenges the pervasive narrative of being a transwoman “born in the wrong body.” She writes, “I began to see that my body was not the cause of the hatred directed against me—society did that. My body did not fail to protect me when I was attacked; I did not deserve violence. My body has never been wrong. Someone else decided that.”3 Kai Cheng Thom grasped that by trying on a new framework, it was possible to “relate to my body, transform my body, from a place of joy instead of anger and fear.”
Radical self-love asks us to try on new ways of thinking and doing that give us access to new ways of being. Trying on a new framework is like trying on a new coat. It may or may not fit. The coat isn’t wrong for not fitting. You are not wrong for not fitting in the coat. It just doesn’t fit. Far too many of us have been walking around the world wearing our “my body is the enemy” coat, wondering why we feel trapped and miserable. We tried on a thinking that doesn’t fit our pursuit of radical self-love. Deciding our body is the enemy leaves us fighting an unwinnable battle on our own soil. It all comes down to a simple question: if you decide to be at war with your body, how will you ever have peace?
Unapologetic Inquiry #26
Consider the ways in which you have been at war with your body. How have you tried to fight your body or make it surrender to your will? How have you shown it animosity? How can you practice radical reconciliation?
Tool 4: Meditate on a Mantra
Do you have a “right now,” a “someday,” or a “remember back when” relationship with your body? Imagine waiting on a subway platform for a train that is due in five minutes, except it’s eight hours later and the train has never come. You have missed an entire work day! Waiting for the train has become an excuse for doing nothing while declaring, “I swear, someday that train is going to come.” At this point the night staff is locking up the place around you.
Now, imagine you are running to catch the train, and as you arrive on the platform it pulls away. Instead of catching the next train, you stand there for eight hours lamenting how you just missed that stupid train. Thirty trains have passed since you arrived, and yet there you are, shivering and alone in the dark, reminiscing about when you almost caught that damn train! In both scenarios one thing remains true: you are stuck on the platform of life, not going anywhere. Whether you are waiting for the wealth train, the weight loss train, or the new-lover train to take you to happiness or you are watching the “remember when I weighed 125 pounds” train leave with all your joy, your most amazing life is not happening on the train you missed or the one that didn’t arrive. You are avoiding life. Life is happening right now. Tool 4 is designed to get us off that platform and back to a “right now” relationship with our bodies.
Meditation calls on us to be present in the immediate moment, the right now. Meditating asks us to notice what sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, are arising in our bodies, not for the sake of eradicating them but to simply make peace with our present state. Miraculously, through the process of meditation, unpleasant states dissipate on their own. We don’t even have to try to make them go away. A 2016 study done by the Carnegie Mellon University Health and Human Performance Laboratory recruited thirty-five unemployed men and women who were seeking work and experiencing considerable stress. After taking baseline diagnostic medical information, researchers taught half the subjects formal mindfulness meditation (open, receptive, nonjudgmental awareness of your present-moment experience). The rest of the participants were taught a made-up method that focused on relaxation and distraction from worry. When the study concluded, all thirty-five participants claimed to feel less stress and a greater sense of ease. However, brain scans showed that members of the group that practiced mindfulness meditation had greater activity in the regions of the brain responsible for processing stress-related actions, for the sense of calm, and for communication. Four months later, those who practiced mindfulness meditation demonstrated “much lower levels in their blood of a marker of unhealthy inflammation than the relaxation group, even though few were still meditating.”4 Meditation alters our physical and emotional state. It also turns down the volume on body shame.
Our brains are cunning and resilient, storing decades’ worth of information for the sake of keeping us alive. As is true of our social media profiles, there are upsides and downsides to having that much information stockpiled in one place. We are hardwired to retain negative experiences.5 This cognitive function is why we haven’t intentionally touched a hot stove since we were three or used Aqua Net hairspray since we were fifteen. We are biologically predisposed to remember painful things as a function of evolution. These experiences form the informational autobahns of our brains—our neuropathways. This is where mantras come in. A mantra is a word or phrase used repetitively. In Sanskrit, mantra means a tool or instrument of the mind. Mantras not only soothe us but when used in conjunction with meditation can reroute the neuropathways of our brains by replacing negative thought patterns with new ideas—radical self-love ideas.6 Choosing a mantra is about finding a phrase or word we desire to live by. It should make us uncomfortable. It should make us think, “How dare I believe such an audacious thing about myself?” If you feel a little queasy when you speak your mantra aloud, you have probably found the right one. Your mantra should feel like your growing edge. A good mantra may make your body-shame voice louder at first. This is a good sign. Mantras that challenge our current neurological pathways of body shame will initially trigger those pathways as we endeavor to disrupt them. Here are a few mantras you may want to try:
• I love my body.
• I am a vessel of radical self-love.
• My body is my ally.
• I have the body I need to live my best life.
Practice meditating five minutes a day for thirty days and see what happens. Invite the discomfort of sitting in the stillness of the present and saying words you do not yet truly believe. I promise that radical self-love transformation will be birthed in the quiet of those vexatious moments. Meditating on a mantra reminds us that it is time get off that subway platform and get to living. Life is not behind us or before us. Our most amazing, unapologetic life is right here, right now!
Unapologetic Inquiry #27
Our brains are wired for trillions of functions. However, they do not have to stay routed on an express train of body shame and hatred. We can reroute our mental address to radical self-love. Using the following questions, craft two affirmative mantras that you can live into:
1. If I were free of shame or discomfort, what might I say about my body?
2. If I were unafraid of failure or disappointment, what would I do right now?
Tool 5: Banish the Binary
Humans have developed myriad ways to organize the vast quantity of information we take in every day. We categorize life like we separate laundry: lights, darks, gentle cycle, permanent press. But much like laundry, life doesn’t always fall into neat and easily definable categories. Neither do we. We are messy, we humans. We are plaid and polka dot, silk and denim—all in the same shirt. We are hard to sort out. Which is why binary thinking doesn’t serve our radical self-love journey. Historically, we have used the term binary to talk about number sequences, a land reserved for statisticians and computer coders.7 A more contemporary treatment of the term deals with our often rigid and dualistic understanding of gender as strictly male or female, feminine or masculine, and attracted to men or women based solely on those assignments.8 This inflexibility erases the nuance and diversity of human gender and sexuality. Furthermore, binary thinking, when expanded to include all the ways we marginalize the gradients of human behavior and identity, illuminates how either/or thinking limits the fullness of our human potential and clouds our radical self-love vision.
We are not simply good or bad; vessels of pure, divine light or mongers of hate; interrupters of body terrorism everywhere or single-handedly upholding the oppression of bodies across the planet. If “good” and “bad” were the choices on a quiz about who we are, the answer would be “all of the above.” Humans (i.e., you and I) are doing and being all those things all the time. If human behavior were charted on a scatter graph, we each would have dots on every portion of the spectrum: in the middle, at the ends, and every place in between. Binary thinking limits our possibility, squelches compassion, and reinforces narrow ideas of how we get to “be” in the world. That marginalization is a function of internalized body terrorism. If you recall, the practice of “I am not my thoughts” prompted us to examine our thoughts from a place of curiosity and diminished judgment. The same is true for our behaviors. We can change our behaviors, but only when we see them as mutable—of us but not us. Honor that you will be many things throughout the course of your life. Sometimes you will be a phenomenal gift; sometimes you will get on someone’s damn nerves. There is gorgeous potential and heinous instinct in us all. Singularity does not define us. Our instincts influence and shape us but do not define us. When we find ourselves in the land of either/or thinking—characterized by words like never, always, only, every time, mostly, rarely—it is a great sign that we may be off our path. Binary thinking is the antithesis of radical self-love.
Radical Reflection
Humans aren’t laundry! Stop trying to compartmentalize and sort yourself out. Messy does not always mean dirty. Sometimes it just means complicated, and complicated can be beautiful! Ask yourself, “How might I approach life differently if I had compassion for my beautiful mess?”
Pillar 3: Unapologetic Action
Tool 6: Explore Your Terrain
My life partner is a six-pound Yorkshire terrier named Anastasia Duchess. Adopted at eight weeks old, she has been my constant companion and adorable rabble-rouser. Part of the responsibility of choosing her as a life partner was committing to an intimacy unlike anything I had experienced prior. In our first month together, I had to squeeze a tick from her belly, remove impacted stool from her butt, and be awakened by the fresh scent of puppy poop as she scooted her diarrhea-laden backside across my forehead while I slept. This was more intimacy and poop than I had ever known. Loving my dog was an outgrowth of caring for her. That care required that I get all up in the gross details of her little dog self so that I could identify the mundane but telling indicators of her health. By learning about and caring for her little body, I grew to love her profoundly.
We rarely allow ourselves this level of intimacy with our own bodies. Parts of us have gone unobserved, let alone touched, for decades. This negligence is not without cost. A 2003 National Health Industry Survey found that 57 percent of breast cancer survivors found their cancer through breast self-examination or by accident.9 Put plainly, we must touch our bodies, in all manner of ways and for all manner of reasons. It is impossible to be a responsible steward of a body we constantly avoid being intimate with. Building love relationships require getting to know the other party. Our relationships with our bodies are no different. As we learn them, we can access their unique power and gifts.
A workshop participant whom I’ll call Nicole shared how stuck she’d been feeling when she started working with this tool. Nicole’s history of sexual trauma made touching herself an act filled with anxiety. I suggested that Nicole add structure to the process and focus her touch around specific intentions. Having a purpose, time, and intention for touching herself allowed her to choose which kind of touch she felt up for and gave her time to prepare emotionally for the experience. Over the course of several phone conversations, Nicole and I developed what I call the three E’s of touch: exploration, examination, and ecstasy.
When we build intimacy with our bodies through the process of exploration, we are learning the topography of our flesh. What colors, shades, and textures make up our landscape? As we do in our meditation process, we allow ourselves simply to notice what is present with our bodies. Exploration gives us a baseline understanding of how our bodies look and feel. This baseline is the foundation for the second E, examination.
If exploration is like a MapQuest of our bodies (it tells us the basics), then examination is the app with real-time traffic updates. Understanding our unique terrain gives us access to awareness. With awareness, we can be alerted when something is off-kilter. Noticing skin discoloration or variations in our body mass gives us the information we need to advocate for our well-being. Doctors are fantastic, but they do not know your body better than you. Examination makes you an expert in you, and you should be.
Lastly, touch yourself for ecstasy. Our bodies are designed for pleasure, but so many of us deny ourselves the riches of our own sensual touch. A 2009 Psychology Today article reported on a comprehensive analysis of thirty-three studies of female orgasm over the preceding eighty years. The analysis was conducted by Elisabeth Lloyd, author of The Case of the Female Orgasm. She found that only about half of women sometimes have orgasms during intercourse. About 20 percent seldom or never have orgasms during intercourse. And about 5 percent never have orgasms, period.10 Physiology is a key reason for the lack of female orgasm. Most orgasms are achieved through clitoral stimulation, and there is generally not enough friction during intercourse to generate arousal to orgasm. Know what might help such an issue? Touching yourself! When we touch ourselves sexually, we are not just getting ourselves off (which is wonderful); we are becoming masterful tour guides for our lovers. We know all the most breathtaking views and the best places to dine! Giving ourselves pleasure is a powerful way to teach others how to please us. Radical self-love is built on the foundation of intimacy with our bodies. Get intimate with your body and it will teach you and others how to love it.
Unapologetic Inquiry #28
Ecstasy is not a naughty word. Our bodies are designed for pleasure, and we should never feel ashamed about enjoying them. When was the last time you took a moment to explore pleasure in your body? Take five minutes and write down the four sensations your body enjoys the most. Only include things that do not require other people. Pick two of them, and do them! Then reflect on what it was like to intentionally indulge in the rapture of your gorgeous body.
Tool 7: Be in Movement
Do you remember kindergarten recess? The bell rang, the teacher dismissed the class, and, if you were like me, you grew wings, levitated above your chair, and promptly flew out of the classroom, landing squarely on the hot black asphalt of the school yard. Before the playground became a site of body shame and terrorism, before crushes and elementary school politics, there were a swing set, tetherball, you, and ten to twenty other sweaty, gleeful little children. We loved recess because recess meant movement. After hours of being confined to those uncomfortable wooden desks, recess was body liberation. Movement was an axis of joy, not drudgery. Today, many of us move from a sense of shame or obligation, which generally means the movement doesn’t last long. Every January, gyms spill over with new humans resolving to “get fit,” drop fifteen pounds, or whatever the latest resolution is. By March, the gym is back to bare. Not because we are all lazy losers but because our commitments are birthed out of duress. We are at the gym because we’re “supposed” to be, not because we legitimately enjoy it. We have a limited shelf life in these bodies, and, yes, we want to care for them as best we can. Exercise can be a positive activity, but good for us does not have to equal soul torture.
About three years ago, the voice of the dreaded “should” told me I needed to run a 5K. I wasn’t even sure what the K in 5K stood for, but still, I downloaded the app and started to run. Mysteriously, that same loud “should” voice failed to remind me that jogging might not be the most comfortable medium of exercise for a person who wears a size 36JJ bra. Nevertheless, I found myself pounding the dirt trails of scenic northern California, sweat stinging my eyes, shoulders cracking beneath the weight of my ample bosom. Jogging made my teeth ache. Literally, my gums would throb with pain at the 2.5K mark of each run. About two weeks in, I was on the trail, hands affixed atop my breasts, trying to keep from giving myself a concussion, when my gums began the dull thud of pain that was common with every run. On this day I stopped, stood stock still, and asked myself, “Why in the hell am I doing this? I hate running!” Barely upright at the peak of an Oakland trail staring into the resplendent sunshine of San Francisco, I got honest with myself and my body. I didn’t want to run. I didn’t like it, and it was silly of me to force myself to do something that brought me zero joy. What I wanted to do was sign up for the West African dance class at my local community center and learn the Moribayasa, a dance for women overcoming great adversity (the perfect honor for my breasts). And that’s exactly what I did: dropped the jogging and found some movement that made me happy. I assure you, my gums and my boobs thanked me.
How do we know that movement is an inherent joy? Because babies who are completely incapable of forming sentences or peeing in the pot move their bodies to music. Whether they’re gyrating to hot Latin beats or mimicking Michael Jackson, babies remind us that our bodies are made for movement and that movement is an act of freedom and radical self-love. Find those babies on YouTube, and then find what moves you and go do it!1
Unapologetic Inquiry #29
What were your favorite childhood games? Did you play kickball, Mother may I, red light/green light, capture the flag? Did you love to go walking along a creek or in the woods? Did you love swimming? Dancing? Why did you stop doing what delighted you? What might happen if you invited those activities back into your life? You still deserve to be delighted.
Tool 8: Make a New Story
Our body shame is a story whose chapters began being written in some of our earliest memories. Body shame is not a thrilling page-turner but a grueling text of embarrassment, judgment, and grief. Our story made us believe we would never have love, we would never be good enough, we would always be rejected. Decades later we find ourselves still stuck, the body-shame story on loop in our minds. We do not have to keep that story. We absolutely have the power to turn in that cheap and tawdry tale and make a new story.
One the earliest followers of my blog, The Body Is Not an Apology, illustrated the transformative potential of choosing to make a new story. Julie was in her late twenties and of Sicilian descent, a heritage that she said explained the flowing ringlets of chestnut tresses that cascaded down her back. Being Sicilian also explained the wisps of ebony hair that coated her arms and snaked down her cheeks as sideburns. Julie was hairy and had spent years making peace with the birthright of her DNA, but she couldn’t shake the deep sense of shame about having hair on her back. Julie had a story she was living in, parts of it given to her by mean children, portions passed down through razor commercials and messages of hairlessness as a standard of femininity. All these contributors had written chapters in a book that was making Julie miserable. Remember, I said discomfort is a catalyst for change. We keep our body-shame stories for such long periods of time because their pain is familiar. It is comfortable. When we awaken to the ideas of radical self-love, body shame becomes an uncomfortable residence and we are called to move. Julie’s discomfort prompted her to act; she decided to make a new story, literally. One day, over a latte in a coffee shop in Colorado, Julie shared her new story with me.
Julie’s Story
In a far-off land beyond the clouds, angel children dwelled among the gods awaiting assignment to be born. Each angel child was given a choice of the parents they would like to be born to. These assignments were based on the lessons the angel child most needed to master in their time on Earth. Angel child Julie had recently chosen her soon-to-be parents and was preparing to leave the land of angel children to be conceived on Earth. The gods summoned Julie to share with her the details of her assignment and to collect her wings. Julie never considered that she would not be allowed to keep her wings when she left the land of angel children, and she was inconsolable when the gods informed her. She cried ceaselessly every day until the final moment she left the land of angel children. The gods felt tender sadness for Julie’s broken heart. They decided that one day they would remind her of her time as an angel child and restore to her a portion of her glorious black wings. Years passed, and Julie grew to be a stunning woman with long, chestnut ringlets of hair. But she felt shame and embarrassment because of the dark hair that grew on her back. The gods decided it was time to remind Julie of her wings. One day, as she stared in the mirror at herself with disdain, she noticed that the hair on her back was the imprint of beautiful black wings.
Julie’s story forever changed the way she saw her body. The hair was no longer a source of shame but a whimsical tale of beauty and grace. What body shame taught her to hate she taught herself to love through the magic of a new story. We have the power to change the narrative of body shame in our lives. We are not bound to the tales of teasing and criticism we were subjected to as children. The good news is we are the authors of our own lives. Let’s make every day an ode to radical self-love.
Unapologetic Inquiry #30
As children, we loved the unconstrained power of imagination we encountered in fairy tales. We could be an opulent princess, a cunning wizard, a talking dog. There were no boundaries around our possibility. Making a new story reconnects us with our unbounded possibility. What story have you been telling yourself that is binding your possibility? What would be possible if that story were different?
Pillar 4: Collective Compassion
Tool 9: Be in a Community
In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown writes, “One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on ‘going it alone.’ “12 Somehow, we’ve come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we’re very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It’s as if we’ve divided the world into “those who offer help” and “those who need help.” The truth is that we are both. Radical self-love is not a solo journey. A complicated and multilayered amalgamation of systems, structures, and experiences authored our body shame and built the larger social complex of body terrorism. We cannot dismantle that system in isolation. Science has much to offer us in our efforts to subvert the internal and external forces of body shame.
In the study of infectious diseases, epidemiologists use what is called the “epidemiological triad” to explain how pathogens spread from person to person.13 This triad consists of an agent, a host, and an environment. Agent refers to the specific pathogen present in the triad. Host denotes whatever vessel (or conditions within a vessel) allows the agent to thrive. The environment consists of the external forces that foster the transmission of the agent to the host. When any of these three elements is disrupted, the trajectory of the disease is halted. In the work of radical self-love, body shame is the dis-ease, we are the hosts, and body terrorism is the environment.
Body shame thrives because our world cultivates and nurtures body terrorism through media, government, and culture. Society then transmits the pathogen of body shame to susceptible hosts (us), who carry it around and pass it on due to the internal conditions of stigma and shame. Being in community is how we interrupt the triad. Our refusal to host body shame in secrecy and isolation is the death knell of this dis-ease. Our perception of vulnerability as weakness is a function of body terrorism. Any belief that keeps us disconnected from our truth and from others will always be antithetical to radical self-love. Vulnerability gives us access to our wonder and magic through the eyes of others. Through this, we get the opportunity to see ourselves anew. To move beyond the narrative of individuality is to move beyond the narrative of scarcity and not-enoughness. It is in community that our stories are held up to the light of connection and we begin to see clearly how we are having a shared experience of being human with other humans—stories, fear, fog, and all.
It is critical that we find communities of care and compassion. In their absence, we are relegated to an echo chamber of pathological body hatred and oppression. Radical self-love environments are all around us, and thanks to the power of technology we can find people all over the world who are committed to interrupting body shame. Hint: www.TheBodyIsNotAnApology.com is a fabulous place to start!
Unapologetic Inquiry #31
What have you been holding in secrecy, shame, or embarrassment? How has it kept you disconnected from others? What are you willing to let go of for the sake of connection?
Tool 10: Give Yourself Some Grace
This book, just like life, makes you no promises, but I would like to offer you one guarantee. I assure you that after you have read this entire book from cover to cover, you will still have days when you do not love your body. Here’s the good news: it is perfectly okay! Let’s just say you skipped all thirty thousand words of writing up to this point and through some happenstance of page sorcery landed on this page. I would personally congratulate you for arriving at the Holy Grail of the ten tools: grace. Even if you categorically rejected every piece of information you have been given thus far, tool 10 will still guide you to the unapologetic power of radical self-love. As long as we live in a world constructed of body shame and body terrorism, the radical self-love journey will be a daunting one at times. Despite my having all the pillars, tools, and unapologetic inquiries at my disposal, and running an entire organization focused exclusively on radical self-love, there are still days when I do not like this black, queer, fat, neurodivergent body.
Does this mean I am a radical self-love failure? No, it means I am a human being living in a world that still profits from body shame. Every day we awake to messages that reinforce the narrative that we are deficient. The body-shame amplifier will occasionally ring loud enough to feel like it is drowning out the chorus of our divinity. On those days, the work is still to love. Religious people consider grace the free and unmerited favor of God. Free and unmerited favor is a gift we can extend to ourselves regardless of faith or doctrine. We do not have to earn radical self-love. Our perfect execution of each pillar and tool will not get us a higher grade in the radical self-love class. The act of giving yourself some grace is the practice of loving the you that does not like your body. On the days we feel the most deficient, the most chased down by the dog of shame, what is being called forth from us is more love—not because we earned it but because we never had to. To give grace to oneself is to move beyond words like worthy and deserving, terms that still imply qualification and quantity. When we recognize ourselves as the embodiment of radical self-love, we stop trying to assess our worth. We begin to understand that it is inherent and unquantifiable. Love just is. We just are…
Week 8 (12/5-12/11) We did it! Body Tool Kit Submit your Body Map Here (due 12/… < <x Due date: 12/11/22,
11:59 PM Submit your Final Paper here (due 12… < <x Due date: 12/11/22, 11:59 PM
Radical Reflection
The most powerful antidote to a world of body terrorism is a world of compassion. Giving yourself the gift of grace is an act of revolution!
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