Summer is in full swing! Beach trips, river floats, pool parties, and more – as the temperature climbs societal pressures can too.
How often do we see advertising or other content about getting the perfect beach body or glowing up in the summer?
In this article we will be sharing affirmations and discussing self-compassion & our bodies as a reminder to be kind to yourself and your body this summer.
1. Your Body Deserves Care Every Day
Your relationship with yourself and your body is important and worth prioritizing. Taking care of your body every day, the same way you would care for a child or someone you love, is a significant way you can show up for yourself. Caring for your body doesn’t have to look any particular way. Everyone’s body is different and has different needs. What matters most in caring for your body is that you acknowledge the different needs your body has and do your best to meet those needs.
Sometimes you may need to ask for help in getting your needs met. That is 100% okay. At the end of the day, when you prioritize taking care of yourself and your body, you are more able to show up and pour care into your relationships with others.
2. Your body is your own not anyone else’s.
Your body belongs to you and no one else. You have the right to your own body, to move it in a way that feels best to you, to do with it that feels best to you. No one should convince, force, trick, coerce you to do anything with your body you don’t want to do. Often, when we think of consent, we are thinking specifically about sexual situations, but consent is beyond sex. Consent is important in everyday situations like shaking hands, giving hugs, wearing the bikini, starting a diet or workout regimen, going out to the club etc.
If you are choosing these things for yourself and looking for support from trusted people in your life, that is completely different than if you are feeling pressured into it. Check in with yourself and remind yourself that you are the one who gets to decide what you do and do not want to do with your body.
Additionally, it’s important for you to reflect on your behavior towards others in the same way. Be mindful of the difference between supporting someone you care about in their body self-compassion journey and pressuring them to do something they aren’t ready or interested in doing.
3. Only you get to choose how to express yourself with your body.
How you dress and adorn yourself along with the gestures and body language you use can be deeply personal and intentional ways you express yourself. You know yourself better than anyone else, and you are allowed to be curious and experiment with how you express yourself. As long as it isn’t hurting anyone else or promoting bigoted beliefs about others – what you wear, how you wear it, and the ways you express who you are is your business, no one else’s.
Celebrate the inherent creativity that is the human experience and shine as bright as you want. Self-censoring your joy is not hot this summer. To be cringe is to be free.
4. Your body can experience safe connection.
It can be difficult to feel safe after trauma, finding safety in your body can happen again after abuse. It starts by creating trust with yourself. When you honor your body and boundaries you are creating safety with yourself. When you prioritize rebuilding trust and safety in your body with yourself, you are more able to recognize green flags in your relationships with others. You become more skilled at noticing how others treat you and your body in healthy and loving ways.
At the same time, in practicing self-compassion in your healing journey around your relationship to your body, you can also come to feel empowered in recognizing red flags relationships with others and responding appropriately in the future. Coming to believe that you can have safe connections in your body with others in the future is a transformational part of the healing process.
5. It’s okay to have a complicated relationship with your body.
Everyone’s body will go through numerous changes over the course of everyone’s lifetime. Our bodies changing over time is an inherent part of the human experience, so it’s unrealistic to think we’ll always have the same relationship with our bodies. Whether it’s temporary, or permanent, changes in your body’s capacity are inevitable. Your relationship with your body isn’t always going to feel comfortable, and that’s okay. Your body is the only one you got so being kind to it might make living in and with it a little better.
Sometimes the way we feel towards our bodies is more about the failures of society and how it is structured than our actual relationship to our bodies. Spaces being inaccessible, expectations about productivity, pressures to fit a certain mold, and societal messaging that we must be perfect all the time are society’s problems, not something wrong with you. With all that being thrown at us, it’s no wonder that our relationship with our bodies can be complicated at times. That’s why it’s important to have compassion for your body every step of the way.
Ultimately, when you practice having self-compassion for your body and your experience in your body, you are more connected to yourself and your life. You can develop more trust in our feelings about the different relationships and situations you find yourself in. This allows you to respond in a way that reinforces your worthiness and empowers you to make decisions that are based in care for yourself and others.
Inspired to Take Collective Action?
Creating communities of care for yourself and others requires acting when you witness harassment or harm. Wherever you find yourself this summer – intervene when you see people bullying others for how they look, what they are wearing, or how they express themselves. For more information and free training about bystander intervention visit righttobe.org.
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