Self love is a revolution

Bodies are where a revolution has begun. We have spent decades upon decades trying to squeeze ourselves into places they cannot fit. Places of power, places of acceptance and normality. We try to give our bodies to a system that has no respect for them, and at what cost? 

The cost of never being content, never being accepting of something so beautiful that it keeps you standing, running, screaming, fighting. This body, with all its flaws that you see, is able to transform food into raw power. It is able to take water from the earth and nurture a brain that looks to the stars and thinks in dreams and metaphors. 

And yet, we have forgotten these beautiful miracles that this sack of skin and bone can do. In moments of weakness, one thinks of how a chin could be stronger, of how a stomach could be flatter, or how a pair of hips could be curved more. How can we sit and think these things? When a chin holds a mouth that can scream and laugh and sing beautiful melodies. When this stomach you sit and stare at can consume worlds and feast upon art. When these hips that we have can dance and move in ways that the soul feels is right. 

We have arrived at a revolution. Where beauty magazines are starting to tell us that we can be loved for who we are. Where more characters on TV are not just plagued with thirty year olds playing high schoolers, supposedly awkward, but real characters with bodies that could be like mine. 

We are at a moment where loving yourself is a revolution. Where holding the places of yourself that make you cringe and saying “I love you” instead of hiding away is an act of rebellion. Where taking the things you hate and turning them into something that is apart of you is a war cry. In this era where identity has been seen as part of a whole, now is time to hold your individual body that carries you through experience and embrace it fully. 

Repeat after me: to love the self is a revolutionary act. Be generous with yourself. 
 

Written by Shannon Finnell
April, 2018