The Art of Self Love

The more you look at something, the more you understand it. The more it makes sense. The more you see the details you didn’t before, and understand why they’re there. The place that they have, and why that place in particular is of greater importance than you realised.

Look at a building. The mortar, the bricks. The foundation of a piece of work that serves an incredibly crucial service to people who have very little understanding of their life without it. The closer you look, the more you see the flaws; the cracks in the edges, cut pieces that aren’t as straight as they look from the street. Maybe roots that have pulled up cement here and there, cracking the edges and pulling it apart ever-so-slightly.
That’s what happens to things that are imperfect.
Now, look at yourself. The bumps, the scars. The little pieces that don’t look quite like they used to. The parts that have aged and ached and brought you through something difficult. Look at it as the carrier that it is. The purpose it serves.

I take pictures of myself to find the flaws that I didn’t see before, and thank my body for keeping them there.
This body that is growing, changing and aging every day that I wake up and put it through hell again. And yet, it remains consistently imperfect. Solid, upstanding and forever unmoving from its one purpose – to house my heart, my mind, my soul and my thoughts that continue to change, contained in this vessel of skin and bones and muscle that allow me to exist.

I love it.

I love what it does for me. I love that it helps me to move, speak and push myself. I love that it holds feelings that are stronger than words. Thoughts that are powerful enough to provoke actions. Ideas which, while possibly unoriginal, glow under a different set of eyes.

Images by Elk Avenue
words by Jasmine Dunn

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