The Unsexy Truth About Self-Friendship
…Sometimes Looks Like a Couch Potato.
When we talk about self-friendship and practices like self-pleasure, self-care, and following our desires, it can sound like a never-ending dance party for one. Like we'll be twirling through life in radiant bliss 24/7, luxuriating in scented baths and putting butler-chilled fruit in our mouths.
But in reality, mastering self-friendship is a lot messier and a little less glamorous. It's about giving yourself the same compassion and grace you'd extend to your bestie on her worst days - the kind where she's laying immobile on the couch with streaky mascara and pilled sweatpants.
You see, nurturing an intimate friendship with yourself means showing up for all of it. The high highs, unproductive stretches, scary lows, and everything in between. It means letting yourself feel, process, and simply BE without an ounce of judgment or self-criticism.
Because my friends, there will be days, weeks perhaps, where your self-friendship practice looks like...falling utterly apart at the seams.
Maybe you're grieving a major life transition or loss, and the sadness comes in thick waves that drown out all else. The couch or maybe your emotional support puppet, may be your sole companion as you ride out each teary swell.
Or perhaps you're simply experiencing a cyclical dip in mental health, mired in the thick ringlets of depression or anxiety's tangle. Just getting dressed and feeding yourself feels like a monumental feat, let alone "living in pleasure."
During these times, the truest form of self-friendship is to let yourself do...absolutely nothing. Give yourself a pass from grand productivity or self-optimization goals. Resist the urge to fight or berate yourself for feeling cripplingly blah.
Because just as you'd tenderly hold space for your bestie on the hardest days, you must do the same for YOU. You'd never scream at her to "get it together" or "stop wallowing." So extend that same unconditional compassion inward.
Let the tears come. Zone out on Comedy or cheesy romcoms - for hours if that's what you need. Wrap yourself up in your coziest blanket and give zero f*cks about what self-care should look like. Your only focus? Softening into the ebb of this wave before it flows again into vitality.
Maybe this version of self-friendship looks like having no shame in ordering enough delivery nachos for six people. It's texting your other friends: "Can't talk today, having a thing." It's feeling uninspired and meh in your body, and peacefully allowing it all to be...without judgment.
Because the reality is, we're whole human beings - not statues frozen in instagrammable delight. We experience the entire gamut of human emotions, energetic rhythms, and messy growth periods. TRUE self-friendship walks with us through it all in raw, unbuttoned truth.
So the next time you find yourself a hot mess on the couch, unshowered and unmotivated, don't beat yourself up. Sure, it may not look like the self-pleasure pep-talks we share. But trust that this version of self-friendship - the quiet holding, the unconditional acceptance - is the realest, most exquisite act of sacred love.
From that tenderly held place, the light and spark will return when it's meant to. And you'll be ready to bloom anew.
Trust me. I made it through it. You will too.
