The Modern Mythmaker
The Modern Mythmaker
A Recovering Self-Abuser's Guide To Self-Love
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A Recovering Self-Abuser's Guide To Self-Love

Or, can we shut up about productivity for a little while?
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The Author practicing “dragon” with some yogi friends.

“I can’t sleep unless I do something to get myself exhausted.”

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that. I understood right away. I lived like that for years.

I grew up in a culture of surplus that believes in overconsumption, especially of food. If the people in my culture don’t want their bodies to store that food as adipose tissue, they must do vigorous exercise to “burn” the extra energy, or “calories” as we so un-romantically refer to the food that gives us life.

Otherwise, the surplus energy we’ve consumed causes us trouble. Trouble in our bodies, our minds, our interactions with the world.

It’s all quite silly, isn’t it?


Throughout most of my life, I’ve been a binge eater/exerciser, uncomfortable in my own body unless, amidst all that over-consumption, I could get my stomach flatter than my pecs (when I started yogic breathing, I realized how ridiculous and counter-intuitive this is).

I’ve had to face down a pornography addiction that started when I was young, that, upon deep reflection, stemmed from a belief that I was on some level undeserving of deep love, that anyone I dated would eventually find out I was a fraud, that I wasn’t as wonderful as I’d “pretended to be.”

I thought I was carrying too many skeletons, too much darkness.

That type of thinking seems to be widely accepted in my culture.

Look at our movies and shows. We love brooding, complicated characters with dark pasts.

They make for interesting storylines, but they’re terrible role models.

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you feel large and tragic? Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

-East of Eden

We learn to love our pain, don’t we? It makes us tragic and interesting. It makes us unique. It helps us relate to those we love. It puts us on the same level as the gunslingers on TV.

But what if we could let our pain go? What if we could forgive?

Would there be any limit to how much we could love ourselves?


I’m as new to practicing self-love as I am to surfing.

Learning to love yourself is like finding out that you’ve been carrying a backpack full of iron bricks for your whole life, with no idea of how or why to set them down, or why you were carrying them in the first place.

But before you try to set them down, you realize that everyone you know is wearing them too. It’s the worst trend since grunge!

“All my friends are carrying similar backpacks!” You shout to no one in particular. “Dave’s carrying more iron bricks than I am, and he’s got a huge house! My father and my father’s father carried iron bricks their whole lives, thank you very much! Why should I have to set mine down? I look so cool, brooding in the corner with my trench coat and cigarettes!”

Self-love means un-becoming. Setting that nonsense down.

It means acknowledging that you have no right to perpetuate the cycle of suffering just because others caused you to suffer.

It means learning to be kind to yourself.

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What would life look like if you didn’t have to carry all your bullshit?

That’s a question that I’ve been wrestling with for the past eight months, as I’ve been traveling the world to see if I can heal through movement and community.

I’ve learned a few things, though I’ve got a long way to go. Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. At a base level, as a human being, you deserve to be loved. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved by you, in your own body. You deserve to know that you are worthy of love and enough, even if you don’t have fancy curtains or a new pressure cooker.

    Your society doesn’t want you to embrace this attitude, because if you do, you won’t pay for and hoard quite as much crap that you don’t need.

  2. Your expectations that the people in your life will change over time into the people that you want them to be are as ridiculous as their expectations that over time you’ll change into the person they want you to be (trust me, they have them too).

    Find and surround yourself with people who let you grow and love you for who you are, now. Learn to love people as they are, even if you don’t love every single thing about them.

  3. Your life and your worth are never measured by your productivity, no matter what your society says.

  4. Movement and exercise are important. How you look or how much you weigh is not, especially when measured against skeletal, airbrushed, photoshopped, superficial superhumans. I wish I could send all the bathroom scales into space.

  5. If you’re seeking “fitness,” your body’s functionality is more important than its form (but having fun is the most important of all). I’d like to burn this into the doorway of every gym in America.

    How you look does not determine your ability level. Don’t believe me? Just ask the world’s top:
    -climbers
    -sumo wrestlers
    -surfers
    -billiards players
    Have these people put in tons of work? Yes! Are they athletic? Of course! Do they look like spray-tanned, uber-toned movie stars or models? Hell no! And they’re way, way cooler. They can do stuff, and they do what they love.

    If you’d rather play volleyball than lift weights, do it. Do it without shoes if you want. Run. Jump. Climb. Have fun! Your sense of fun and childish joy is a billion times more important than your muscle tone.

  6. You do not owe stress to anyone in your life. You do not owe stress to your job. You do not owe stress to the people that you love. You deserve to have boundaries. You deserve to rest rather than push yourself to the brink. You deserve to say no.

  7. Radical self-love happens after forgiveness. The only person you hurt by bearing grudges and holding tightly to your pain is yourself. If you spend the rest of your life thinking about the people that hurt you, you’re giving them power over you. Learn to forgive them and let them go. Learn that they’re flawed human beings just like you, that their actions are motivated by the same things that yours are.

  8. You are the only person who is always with yourself, so for heaven’s sake, be kind. I know this is hard for so many people, so start small! Try to catch yourself the next time you say “I’m a mess” or “I’m awful.” Stand up to your inner critic. Remind yourself that you’re a human being, which means that sometimes you’re ok, sometimes you’re freaking great, but you are never awful.

  9. If you want to dance, dance. If you want to sing, sing. Wanna paint your bedroom pink and chuck in a fingerpainted mural on the ceiling? Hell yes. Do it. Allow yourself the joy of expression, even if no one (including you) thinks you’re “good” at it.

  10. Nothing, in all the happiness books I’ve ever read, has changed me as powerfully as the words “feed your inner child” have. The world doesn’t want us to be childish, because it needs us to produce things so that other people spend money on them. We have to re-become childish. We have to revolt!

    Trust me, you don’t outgrow anything. You just stop doing things. But it is not too late to:
    -climb a tree
    -dance naked in the moonlight
    -build a lego tower
    -learn to surf
    -wrestle with your dog in the mud
    -go to the woods and not return for hours

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We can love ourselves. We can surround ourselves with people who affirm that we’re worthy of love, not those who want to change us. We can let go of the endlessly exhausting need to change others. But it takes work. And that’s ok!

Our society has conditioned us since we were young to never be quiiiiiiite ok with ourselves. To always need to produce, buy, and consume more. That’s the point where we start our growth.

You’re a flawed human being, and that’s ok.

Wanna hear it again?

YOU’RE A FLAWED HUMAN BEING, AND THAT’S OK!!!!!!

I hope one day you see how truly, deeply, madly awesome you are.

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The Modern Mythmaker
The Modern Mythmaker
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