Self-love. Usually pushed with face masks, anti-ageing creams and other various fashion trends.
I’ve fallen victim to these ads, buying into the troupe that self-care means skincare, means spending hours anxiously staring in the mirror at flaws I saw in my reflection.
Valentine’s day means intense ‘self-care’ ads. This year is my first year spending valentines with a romantic partner (my last partner having broken up with me the day before leading to me eating the chocolate I’d bought him myself and binge watching TV shows while crying) so I’m pretty used to spending Valentine’s day enviously scrolling while my phone bombards me with Galentines ads.
Throughout college my focus was getting through it. Skimming through classes, work and being somewhat social, it was difficult for me to spend any time caring for myself in any sort of positive light. Things were difficult and through copious amounts of therapy, ‘mindfulness’ and ‘self-care’ were pushed as the main cures which I absolutely despised.
But the small voice inside my head asked me to try anything that was suggested.
So I did.
Walks, journaling, meditation, drinking tons of water, cutting out junk food, sleeping less and being active more.
But nothing worked. So I felt hopeless, felt like I was beyond helping. Which wasn’t a great place to be!
Having told this to my lovely therapist she suggested that I view self-care as doing things I enjoyed, when I wanted to enjoy them, to listen to my body and it’s needs. Which was definitely really weird to hear. I mean, listen to my body? It’s telling me things?
So I had to relearn what my signals were, when I wanted food, cravings, when I wanted sleep and when I wanted to lay on the ground hoping the moss would slowly devour me.
Y’know, all the simple things.
And slowly but surely over the last few years, I started to learn the language of self-love. Loving my imperfections because as cliche as it is, it’s what makes me, me. I started to look into things I’d always wanted to do, such as HerCampus and researching for future plans and being prepared.
I’d like to say I’m fluent in the self-love language but that would be entirely a lie. Learning a language is extremely difficult anyway and learning a language while needing to feed it and look after it? Double hard. There’s always ups and downs in any sort of journey whether that be learning a language, going for a run or beating a boss in your favourite video game. Learning how to love yourself is exactly like that.
In order to understand a few things about how others perceive self-love I asked using a question on my instagram. ‘What do you do to show yourself love?’
I got answers all along the same lines: Take time for yourself, whether that be cute little coffee dates or charity shopping! Everyone said the same thing! Maybe we’re not so diffierent after all :)
My conclusion? Although Valentines (and almost certainly Galentines!) Is just a way for companies to get your money, maybe reflect on how you treat yourself and then, well, treat yourself!
Learn your signals, take that nap, buy that trinket, eat your favourite food more than you do.
To end I’d like to leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Rupi Kaur
‘How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.’