A good friend of mine recently reminded me that it takes a healthy dose of self-love to rock cowboy boots, a bikini, and an afro through the lobby of a South Beach hotel. Her comment made me laugh, ‘cause it surprised me: There I was thinking I was just being me.
At the time, I thought nothing of it. I laughed and kept living this free-spirited artist life. Being myself in spaces where its more tempting to wear a mask is the kind of thing my three-year-old self has led me to do since I started listening to her. That fiery, curly headed little girl with the inquisitive spirit and sensitive heart has always been braver than adult me. She plays by nobody’s rules, except her own. She’s hella brave. Cultivating that little one’s spirit has led me to the level of self-love and awareness I now possess. But it hasn’t come easily. Loving and owning this person I am, rough edges included, has taken a decade of learning self-love.
I am, admittedly, a different kind of person. A natural empath, I grew up in the East SF Bay area, and my friends were many nationalities. In elementary school, my close friends were Chinese, Filipina, African-American, Latina and Caucasian. Everyone who was kind and had a sense of humor, we got to be friends. Yay! Everyone who was mean got to keep stepping. If you exhausted me, or your game was a little too mean, you were welcome to keep strolling by.
Cultivating self-love, for me, works a bit like that. In with the kind, out with the overly critical.
Here, I’ll share four practices I’ve learned to cultivate self-compassion as a Creative over the last ten years, and how learning to do so has changed my life.
1.Embrace myself.
I am different kind of girl. I read, a lot. I love libraries, which is absolutely derived from my maternal grandmother (an elementary school teacher) and my mother (a combination of Josephine and Beth March of Little Women). My personality is a mix of sharp, analytical maternal intellect and the Berkeley-hippie adventure loving persona of my father.
This means I don’t do a lot of “stereotypically” Black things. I’m not always up on the latest hip hop artists, but I do love old school Erykah and the classic odes of Bob Marley. I’m not the best dancer, and for me, clubs are TOO LOUD. I’d rather sit in a lounge and sip a glass of wine and talk…about books, spirituality, art. Accepting who I am, how I am, helps me love me.
2. Create room to explore (and enjoy!) my art
I mentioned the art thing before. I write, and paint. As The WE Collective continues to speak to all of the incredible things Black women are and carry and experience, my hope is to be able to share more of those parts of myself with our community.
What this has meant over the last ten years, is that I make time to sit with my bottom planted on the floor, and find out what happens to acrylic when I apply it to canvas. The more I do this, and the more I write, the healthier and happier I am. The lower my resting heart rate falls. The more I find myself humming throughout the day, for more reason.
Whatever “art” is in your life, I encourage you to carve out time and space for that. You become a person who practices self-love when you make time to do the things you love.
3. Show up vulnerably in community
This is a big one. I have whom I believe to be the best friends in the world; people who love and laugh and are kind and do their emotional work. They are people who show up for each other and teach me how to love. It’s important to put ourselves into places and spaces where we can find like-minded people, folks who espouse the kinds of things that create goodness and health in the world. Folks who dare us to show up as ourselves. In doing so, we learn how to authentically give and receive love.
For me, this has meant pressing into therapy and spirituality and groups affiliated with the values of love, service, and accountability. For you, it may take a different shape. The important thing is to find people whose life looks like what you value, what you believe to be true, and show up with value and truth in that space.
Scary as heck---vulnerability always is----but so, so rewarding.
4. Ask for what I need (Be clear about my boundaries)
As a woman of many trades: a nine to five job, a writing platform and creative aspirations, a business I’m developing with three other women, family, friends and a pup who needs lots of love, communicating boundaries helps me love myself well.
I have learned to ask for what I need, whether that means space, rest, or behavioral changes in relationships. Boundaries tell me where I end and where another begins. The more I know myself, the more I know what I need to ask for from others.
For those of us who are beginners, I highly recommend Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. The book will change your life.
The world we are living in today is stressful. Black woman, the best thing you can do for yourself and those in your sphere is to shower yourself with love. I encourage you to pick one of these self-love practices and begin to practice them this week. Self-love is like fine wine…it gets better with time.
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