One day, you’ll wake up and realise that life has been a long lesson of unlearning. Taking the information you thought was integral to a solid sense of self, and realising it’s kept you in a liminal period of almost loving yourself. Wholly. Embodied. Effortlessly.
You’ll notice a significant amount of your life force and your fuel has been allocated to being less off-putting. To who? Why? As if even being alive isn’t a fundamentally gross, beautiful, rare and coveted experience. Who made you feel that way about yourself? Does it matter? There’s a version of you that doesn’t fear asking yourself the hard questions and answering them in the same breath. Probe some more. Implicate yourself as both victim and perpetrator of the standards that keep you technically shackled, while feeling liberated. If only until your next shower. Why should your confidence wash off?
Before you internalise this as another deficiency, can I tell you a secret?
It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing past the facade of yourself. A gentler observation that penetrates way deeper. What will you find? The attachment you have to being beautiful, magnetising and alluring, and the fear that no one will see you like you do? Or that you’ll truly never resonate with how you are? You will, you do, but you won’t be able to tell until you keep going deeper. What will you notice past the body holding fear, held together by fascia? The limbs that carry you. The energy that sustains you. The aura that precedes you.
Until you can see beyond the texture, blood and marrow. Until you let yourself bathe in the essence of yourself beyond flesh. Until you anchor in a knowing that can’t be validated by image.
How will you cultivate a sense of self you can come back to instead of escaping from?
Answer the question before you continue reading. You don’t need one irrefutable truth, but you must practice wrapping your head around ideas that challenge outdated versions of yourself. Once you do, you’ll arrive at a self heavy with wisdom, shiny with clarity and bumpy with nuance.
There you are.
I missed you!
Lillian ‘Flexi Mami’ Ahenkan is a two-time bestselling author, astrologer, DJ and host. Famous for saying what everyone’s thinking and creating language for the modern experience, she’s built her digital temple on true dialogue – the kind that makes you laugh, squirm and self-reflect all at once.
Lillian ‘Flexi Mami’ Ahenkan is a two-time bestselling author, astrologer, DJ and host. Famous for saying what everyone’s thinking and creating language for the modern experience, she’s built her digital temple on true dialogue – the kind that makes you laugh, squirm and self-reflect all at once.
The History of Beauty
A timeline of the moments that defined beauty culture from the 1900s to now.
Rethinking Natural Beauty
Elise Loehnen on reclaiming beauty as play, presence and self-expression.
Adorn. Transform. Belong.
Isamaya Ffrench on beauty as art, culture and human connection.
The History of Beauty
A timeline of the moments that defined beauty culture from the 1900s to now.
Rethinking Natural Beauty
Elise Loehnen on reclaiming beauty as play, presence and self-expression.
Adorn. Transform. Belong.
Isamaya Ffrench on beauty as art, culture and human connection.