My cauldron has been stirred and something is brewing…

I have always known that self-care was a radical act of defiance against the go-go-go status quo. Though some have tried to hijack it with a zillion things to tick off before breakfast, I have long been a stand for slowing down, listening to the whispers of your body, even, perhaps, doing… nothing ?

Today at Extinction Rebellion I got at an even deeper level that self-care is a radical, rebellious, possibly political act.

Every time you rest instead of push through, you are taking a stand (albeit a lying down one) against our cultural status quo of growth at all costs.

Every time you choose play over achieving one more thing on the to-do list you are standing up for your self-worth having NOTHING to do with your productivity.

The storyline that our worth lies in our productivity is the same storyline that says that GDP is a viable way of measuring the success of a country.

As long as we continue to beat ourselves up with ‘not enough’ we are colluding with the prove-your-worth culture that has us do more, better, faster, and WE are perpetuating the growth-at-all-costs value-system that has caused this climate catastrophe.

It’s time for a new story. It’s time for new values. What if we valued play as much as productivity? What if we valued rest and vitality over status and titles?

I definitely don’t have the answers. But I’ve never been very good at simply accepting what I was told – I’ve always peered at it from different angles and asked questions.

Yes, we need systemic change.

No, naps won’t solve everything.

But love will.

And that’s what self-care is really about. A shift from self-flagellation to self-love.

And what if we each made that shift on an internal level? Understood and felt and deeply knew that we really were of unarguable value, simply by virtue of being alive- just as each animal, each tree, plant, flower; just as our beautiful planet is intrinsically valuable, simply by being here, spinning through space…

I wonder… if we realised how magical we are, us humans… if we let ourselves feel that… if we might then need a little less external proof in the form of ‘things’. If we might need less stimulation, entertainment and distraction.

If we also might then have more time to look into where our food is coming from, who made our clothes. If we might then have more time to talk to neighbours with different backgrounds and opinions and budgets and work for solutions for all.

There’s a voice in me that says that preaching love as the answer is naive and simplistic. But there’s a deeper, luckily-by-now-louder voice that says it really IS the answer. Or at least the foundation to the answers.

Today was a beautiful and humbling experience. I’ve never felt so peaceful in London, let alone in a crowd in London, let alone a rebellion!

Something new is being birthed, and it IS the vision so many of us have been seeing for years.

All this week, strangers danced and played and chopped food and ate together and while there were thousands of arrests by officers doing their job, there were zero police injuries. That is unheard of in a rebellion this size. I heard of police sharing stories and hugs with the rebels and thanking them, because as humans they stand on the same side. As humans we stand together on the same side of this. It’s not a party-political issue. What if this is what it takes for us to come together, loving ourselves, loving each other and loving our planet?

What if love really IS the answer? What might you do differently if your heart was wide open with love for yourself, for all Life and for our planet? And how can you open a little to that love right now? Because it’s right there, waiting for you. Waiting to pour in and light you right up, like the powerful, magical creative being that you are ?

No more beating yourself up
Remember how powerful you are
Our planet depends on it

??✊?

Click here to tweet: “No more beating yourself up. Remember how powerful you are. Our planet depends on it.” ~ @KateWolfTweets

Photo Credit: Simon Matzinger on Unsplash.

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