My love for this book is rich and deep so let me put that bias on the table right away. I can think of no better themed book for Valentine’s season than this one about radical self love. Sonya Renee Taylor is a poet, activist, writer and speaker. Her unique ability to capture complex social concepts with poetic sensibility is a treasure. There is a lot packed into this book wrapped around social theory of body image and what distorts self-perception in our society. Taylor has woven in journaling and reflection prompts to make this book as much a self-guided tool as it is a theoretical education.
Her views are widely encompassing and highlight the multilayers of work to be done on these subjects.
“Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia, are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies.”
Taylor explains that this work has to be radical. It has to be radical because of all that we are up against and it has to be radical because things like self-acceptance and body neutrality cannot be the final goal (though perhaps very important ports in the storm).
“Before body shame stripped us of our inherent sense of self-worth, it stripped us of compassion. We saw failure in every mirror, we judged our every thought. We berated and abused ourselves because we were berated and abused by others. We thought the outside voice was our own, and we let it run roughshod over our lives.”
Taylor invites us to see the devastation that comes from body shame as an expansive poison covering far more terrain than we initially see. Our judgment of ourselves becomes our lens on the world, our lack of self compassion leads to diminished compassion for others, greater perceived division and sense of competition.
Radical self-love is far more than body image work, it is a way of shifting our perception internally and externally to freely and powerfully move throughout a world that is built for us to implode. If this sounds ambitious, rest assured that Taylor will walk you through this process one clear step at a time. If you’re curious to get a taste for her work, she had a brilliant appearance on Brené Brown’s podcast where you can hear her coaching Brené through her own radical self-love work in real time.
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-sonya-renee-taylor-on-the-body-is-not-an-apology/