How I Replaced Self-Worth with Self-Love
and our August book club book!
This week has been consumed by planning and packing, since we leave Thursday for a week long family vacation. These next few weeks are JAM packed with work deadlines, and traveleing. In anticipation, I’m using a lot of my free nights/weekends to fully plop (I rented a movie, made myself a mocktail and turned down my A/C), and blocking out the end of the month now for zero plans (!). Here are a few moments and highlights from my week, plus a slightly random voice memo story from the week…
📖 My friend forwarded me a post by Anne Lamott that includes this wonderful piece of advice: “When I see a friend or a relative who is worn out, I intuitively know what to offer; a cool drink of water, a chair in which to do the sacrament of ploppage, a bracing cup of coffee or tea, chocolate or a mandarin orange, a mandatory time out. I try to help them keep the patient comfortable, and it remind me to do this with my own baby self all day.”
📚 Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe: Reading this outrageous book on a park date with a friend, I kept interrupting our walk to read aloud sentences, “He was a wind chime in human form, dangling dorkily from the glorious tree of higher education.” In it, Margo drops out of college to have a baby (the father is the dorky wind chime, her former professor), and is immediately hit by the weight of the challenge and financial impossibility. She creates an OnlyFans account, which—stick with me here—gains popularity when her dad, a former pro wrestler, gives her tips on the art of creating a branded personality. Original and empathetic to its core. Elle Fanning, who reads the audiobook, recently signed on to star in the AppleTV+ adaptation!
🎥 Longlegs: In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree. Bro, false advertising. Honestly though, this movie was good but not great (not nearly as great as the hype would lead you to believe). It is a slow burn psychological thriller / horror, which borrows the soul of The Silence of the Lambs and survives off the vibes (which is not necessarily a bad thing). But overall, I think they could have done more to bring in a better resolution to make the film scarier, more satisfying, and overall better. Nicolas Cage side quests of dedicating himself to any role thrown at him with sheer brilliance and utter passion is something to behold. Sure he's been in some bizarre and intense films but this one takes the bar and raises it to new heights. But what makes this whole thing fun is Cage giving it his absolute all to this provocative and twisted character full of nastiness and almost comedic idiosyncrasies. It's one of his most unique roles and that says something. Brings me back to a time where psycho/thriller type films were top tier. Nicolas Cage is masterful.
I recently returned to my library copy of Sonya Renee Taylor’s book, The Body is Not an Apology. The cover is familiar and memorable: Taylor, who is beautiful but exists in a body that is often criticized as “too much” or “not enough,” lies nude beneath strategically-placed flowers and the subtitle, “The Power of Radical Self-Love.” I flipped through it’s pages, and wrote many, many notes.
“I mean, of course I love myself,” I’d thought, before adding, “when I’m eating well, not yellling at my kids, getting work assignments in before deadine...” My answer was conditional, a response so common Taylor addresses it on the first page, disentangling the “fickle cousins” self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence—all of which are external and ego-driven—from another entity entirely: Radical self-love.
Radical self-love, as Taylor describes it, is an inherent state we are born into, distinct from shame and messages of oppression, but also from our actions. It is the understanding that the tiny boxes I folded myself into, what Audre Lorde famously referred to as “the intimacy of scrutiny,” are completely irrelevant. Put simply, Taylor writes, “You are enough. Being good or nice is not.”
I didn’t know it then, but I was about to experience a blow to my worth and self-esteem unlike any I’d ever felt.
Every part of my relationship with my husband and partner of thirteen years was externally validated: Our families surprised us to celebrate our engagement with a party, my friends threw me a beautiful bridal shower and took me to one of my favorite places for my bachelorette party. Though many people supported my decision to leave my marriage, I knew that I had broken a fundamentally unbreakable rule. My empty ring finger felt like evidence of my failure, and I turned on myself with cruelty. I was so far outside of the tiny boxes that I didn’t see the point in anything; my self worth hung at a zero.
The often repeated cliché is true: The only way out is through. Over time, I learned to sit with my big emotions, accept the decisions I made, and develop a new, more solid (and loving) way of speaking to myself.
Practicing radical self-love and true self-compassion is not the same thing as giving yourself permission for a free-for-all, zero-fucks-given, treat-yourself mentality. It isn’t even silencing the inner-critic, as I feared it would be, but recognizing when it is too loud. It is holding the tension between our responsibilities, while attuning to our needs. It is recognizing who builds the tiny boxes, and cultivating “kind and flexible” thinking, as Dr. Pooja Laksmin put it in her recent book, Real Self-Care. “It’s less about ‘going easy on myself,’ and more about paying attention to how I talk to myself and slowly learning a new language,” she writes.
This new language is quieter than self-hate; a conversation rather than an argument. It goes against the mainstream tiny boxes we were handed, so it takes constant tending-to, through intentional practices that help us turn inward, and selective consumption away from products and media that perpetuate this idea of contingent “self worth.” It is why Audre Lorde famously wrote, “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” It helped her maintain a “disciplined attention to the true meaning of ‘it feels right to me’” even amid the ideas “the white fathers told us were precious.”
I still tend to my responsibilities—I take care of my body, my children, work, dog, house stuff, and self—but from a place of love, rather than hate. I still ask, “Like this?”
But the person I’m asking is myself.
A few photos from my camera roll:
August book club book is Bye, Baby by Carola Lovering — “On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It's her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she's just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering― with a jolt of fear―that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world.”
I’ll create a group chat so we can share thoughts throughtout the month too! Then we will meet on Zoom on Tuesday, August 27th at 7:30 PM, PT to discuss the book. Click the link below to register. See you there!
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I was so excited to watch Longlegs, but I think there's too much hype :/ Glad for your honest opinion!