You Must Live a Life of Radical Self-Love & Here's How to Do it.

Last week, I wrote a post where I shared some intuitive prompts that could be used in a self-love reading. Basically, asking your own intuition how to love yourself more right now.

And this week, I read the transcript for a podcast episode about radical self-love.

The author is Kara Loewentheil and she comes to the topic from a feminist perspective, saying that radical self-love is a political act of refusal, for anyone steeped in cultural oppression. Her point of view is that being marginalized teaches you not to love yourself and to put your own needs last on your to-do list.

I highly recommend this episode, and I want to talk more about radical self-love today.

The more marginalized identities you live in or with, the more ways you’re told that you’re not good enough. So if you are Black or Indigenous or a person of color, if you are fat, if you live with a disability or a chronic illness, if you’re neurodivergent, if you’re LGBTQ+, if you’re a “minority” religion, if you’re poor, and there’s many other aspects.

I am in so many of these marginalized communities she named! How about you?

Oppressive Ideology is Insidious: You're Living it but Don't Know it

If someone asked you, do you believe that you re inherently less worthy of good things or a good life than other people are, you would probably say no. But if you belong to a marginalized community, like I do, odds are you are living like you do believe that and you probably don't even know it.

Think about the situations and the relationships you are putting up with right now. 

One of the biggest arguments for wholeheartedly pursuing radical self-love is that what you  experience on the outside is always going to be a mirror of the love you have for yourself inside.

If life is mistreating you, and you have a hidden belief that that's what you deserve, not only will you put up with it, you'll mistreat yourself, too.

But if you begin to treat yourself a lot more kindly, and offer yourself more compassion and acceptance, you won't settle for less from others.
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What if You Could Start Treating Yourself with Reverence?

I asked Google what it means to treat yourself with reverence and here was its AI overview in response...
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To "treat yourself with reverence" means to regard yourself with deep respect, almost like you would a sacred or highly valued thing, acknowledging your worth and treating yourself with care and consideration, not taking your own well-being for granted; essentially, showing yourself the same kind of profound respect you might show someone you deeply admire. ​

Here are a few links Google offers in the sidebar...

What Would Reverence Change?
What Does Reverence Mean?
The Gift of Reverence

So imagine for a moment that most of the time, you treated yourself with reverence and radical self-love.

(1) What would that look and feel like?

(2) What do you think would change?

Google suggests that you would begin to regard yourself with wonder and appreciation because of who you are, accepting your flaws with compassion and valuing yourself deeply in spite of them. You'd take better care of yourself each day and challenge your negative self-talk by saying things to yourself that are kinder and more loving.

You would spend more time with yourself, thinking about what you value and identifying your boundaries.

A couple of the other links offered suggested treating yourself the way you would treat someone you admired and adored.

Imagine that, why don't you?
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If you treat yourself with love and care and respect and reverence, when you come across someone who doesn’t,... you won’t understand why they would think you would want what they’re offering you. When you love yourself radically & completely, you're simply not available for any other kind of love.
​- Kara Loewentheil

Know Your Own Value

When you don't know your own value, you will expend a lot of energy trying to get others to see it. Defending it. And if you don't love yourself, you'll do back flips to get people to love you, because you can't imagine they'd love you just because of who you are.

​If that's where you are right now, and if you are recognizing yourself in this post, know that you can change the way you think and feel about yourself.

The first step is to realize that without knowing it or meaning to, you have internalized societal messages about who you are and what you deserve. What that means is that there is a lot of thinking and feeling inside you that is not based on the truth.

The next step is to take this truth on faith until you can believe it for yourself: there are subtle accusations floating around out there, and inside, and you are innocent of every charge. You are lovable and good and you deserve to be honored and respected, no matter what.

The third step is to commit to treating yourself as if what you just read is true, starting today. Be willing to live in the in-between stage where you don't quite believe it, but you're going to act like you do. Not faking it until you make it, but trusting it until you come to know the truth of it in your soul.

This is my pledge, too. I am on the same journey.

And here at this blog, I promise to inspire you with lots of ways to reach for comfort, joy and delight.

See you next time!

Love, Jeanine
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