The voice of doubt, shame, and guilt blaring in our heads is not our voice. It is a voice we have been given by a society steeped in shame. It is the “outside voice.” Our authentic voice, our “inside voice,” is the voice of radical self-love!

Practice unapologetic inquiry. Part of helping people sort through their ideas and beliefs is to ask questions about those ideas. That includes asking ourselves hard questions: “Why do I believe this? What am I afraid of? What am I gaining or losing by trying on a new perspective?” The answers that stick with us over time are the answers we come up

Our thoughts are a hybrid of information forged from our own experiences, traumas, successes, failures, etc., and massive input from our external world. All those media messages about “good” bodies and “normal” bodies: they’re in your thoughts. All the government-endorsed ideas of safe bodies and dangerous bodies: they’re in your thoughts. You have

Their lack of awareness about those identities generally means their body falls into a multiplicity of default identities that uphold the social hierarchy of bodies. The luxury of not having to think about one’s body always comes at another body’s expense.

People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution.… Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously

The framework of radical self-love seeks to engage people in the process of individual transformation. But as importantly it seeks to dismantle the structural and systemic emotional, psychological, and physical violence meted out against “different” bodies all over the planet.

Yes, we have been less vibrant employees, less compassionate neighbors, less tolerant of the bodies of others, not because we are bad people but because we are guilty of each of those counts against ourselves.

Without compassion for ourselves we will never stay on the road of radical self-love. Without compassion for others we can only replicate the world we have always known. Radical self-love is not about “getting it right.” “Getting it right” is a body-shame paradigm. Radical self-love is honoring how we are all products of a rigged system designed to

We are saddled with body shame because it is an age-old system whose roots and pockets are deep. Body shame flourishes in our world because profit and power depend on it.