By Rochelle Asquith 

Audre Lorde, poet and feminist icon, described taking care of oneself as an act of political resistance when she said: “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Self-care and self-love have become ubiquitous terms in the feminist movement – a movement in which many members cite Audre Lorde as their source of inspiration for these ideals. 

Through her poetry and essays, Lorde has inspired many (including me) to see the individual as political, to see the way politics affects our bodies, our self-perception, and the intricacies of our personal lives. Lorde wasn’t simply saying that the personal is political, and that’s all there is – rather, she said that politics impact people in a very personal way and that it’s important we understand how much it impacts us. And so, learning to take care of oneself amongst all the chaos is crucial.

Personally, I’ve always struggled with the idea of self-love. It’s always seemed like a far-fetched ambition that I didn’t understand. What if I love myself a bit too much and become vain and conceited? What if I become so arrogant that I can’t handle any sort of criticism? The line between self-love and vanity has been much discussed over the past few years, with the conclusions often ambiguously stating that it is all ultimately a matter of personal choice and how you see yourself. Constantly telling yourself that you’re amazing isn’t necessarily the best idea, in my opinion. It can become arrogance without you even noticing, and it can blind you to any reality other than the one that you want to see. 

Self-love was a phrase I saw pasted on t-shirts and notebooks. It certainly didn’t seem like something that would be crucial to my survival as a woman, even though I’ve read and absorbed every word Audre Lorde has ever written. To me, self-love and self-care seemed like the commodification of feminism rather than the real political, collective work. It is the seductive idea that all we need is a bath bomb, a scented candle, and bullet-proof self-confidence, and the world’s misogyny will just fall away. I think this is Audre Lorde’s ideas being misunderstood.  

In the gap between corporate girl-boss feminism and Audre Lorde’s revolutionary and original ideas about self-care, I was left meandering, going back and forth between one wrong conclusion after another. What if I’m not good enough? What if I’m too much? What if I’m too big? What if I’m too small? But underneath all that anxiety and worry that I’d become an arrogance-bloated monster, the truth was that I was unsure about self-care because I didn’t feel like I deserved to love myself.

Often, we wait until we’re really hurting before we let the good things in. We take any good thing gingerly, waiting for the punishment. Women have been taught since birth that we’re not good enough as we are. We have to deserve anything good, and usually that means we have to go through some sort of pain before we are allowed to rest. Just think of burnout culture – think of how many times you’ve heard someone say that they’ve “earned” dessert, or earned a holiday, or any tiny little thing that brings joy in this often bleak world. 

But what if none of this was true? What if I didn’t have to keep endlessly doubting myself? I think it’s quite common to stay in distorted ways of thinking out of fear of what will happen if a different way of thinking goes wrong. And I think the fear, especially for women, of coming across as vapid and arrogant is enough to fuel the hate-fire that already burns far too brightly in the first place; it was certainly enough to keep me afraid of questioning why I didn’t feel like I could love myself.

There’s very little in the way of a blueprint for a woman to learn how to accept themselves fully, especially if she’s marginalised in other ways, too. When I have failed, when I’ve received criticism, or sometimes even just been outright bullied, the judgmental voice in my head has latched onto it. Deep down, I was looking for proof that I wasn’t good enough. 

Ultimately, all this rumination was doing nothing. I was going round and round in circles in my head. What-if-this, what-if-that? I wasn’t coming to any sort of solution. For the uninitiated, rumination is “the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions,” according to the Response Styles Theory proposed by Nolen-Hoeksema. But there is genuine insight that exists far from the realms of self-doubt and rumination. 

When I’m ruminating and judging myself, the conclusions I come to are always something along the lines of, “you are wrong, you’re a failure, and everyone hates you”. But upon genuine insight, I’ve been able to accurately assess a situation and work out where I’ve gone wrong – if I have. For those of us that deal with negative thought patterns, it is important to understand the difference between insight and rumination. 

When I was at school, all my reports said that I was conscientious and insightful. Really, it was an anxiety problem that my teachers (who didn’t know me very well) mistook for wisdom. Insight finds solutions; rumination creates them. And so, part of learning how to love myself has been understanding this difference. 

Suddenly treating myself properly and accepting love and care doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. It turns out that refusing to beat yourself up because you’re human is actually a good thing. It’s not arrogant to love yourself, it’s not conceited to be patient with yourself. As far as I can see, love begets love, and we could all do with a little more of that. All that kindness you would extend to others? You deserve it, too; I do as well. 

At the end of all that worrying and doubt, I can confidently say that I am learning to properly love myself. Not in the way that a L’Oreal advert wants me to, but in the way that I should because I am here, I am queer, and Audre Lorde was right this whole time. Caring for yourself is a radical act. It always has been. And personally, I think we should all be a little more radical.