30 days of self-love: self-worship

I have been working my way through adrienne maree brown’s and Sonya Renee Taylor’s “Journal of Radical Permission: A Daily Guide For Following Your Soul’s Calling,” and I wanted to share the beginning of the below practice section on self-worship.

I’ve already finished this section, and I wanted to come back to this section, reread, and revisit the questions and my answers.

They start off each section with an assessment question. I’d invite you to try this question out for yourself. For me, it felt and still feels really unfamiliar to use the term, “self-worship,” and I’m trying it on here anyway.

Where in my own nature do I see similarities to what I see as divine in the world?

What came to mind immediately was mushrooms – specifically, mycelium. Mycelium is a root-like structure (a mushroom is the fruiting body – like the flower of a plant), through which the fungus absorbs nutrients. Mycelium is a crucial part of any ecosystem. It decomposes plant material (helping with overgrowth in forests) and by wrapping around or actually going into plant roots, acts as what’s called a “mycorrhizal network” that connects separate plants together to transfer nutrients like carbon, nitrogen, water and other minerals. A nutrient telephone!

To me, self-love isn’t just about myself. It’s wrapped up in community and our interdependence, and how I show up within that space. My love for myself is love for other people. My love for myself is love for the environment. My nature is the natural world. That’s why I love this question, what do I find to be divine in the natural world, and where do I see those similarities in me? I strive to be like mycelium, and I see mycelium in me. Mycelium heals the earth, eradicates pollutants, and creates better soil for all of the ecosystem to thrive. Mycelium is symbiotic. When we heal ourselves, we are creating better conditions and a better environment for everyone to thrive. When we love ourselves, we make ourselves and the environment around us more fertile for love. When we take in the ways we’ve been harmed and have harmed, and we transform that into love with accountability, we thrive. We heal. Biological degradation is bioremediation.

I heal myself, I heal the world. I love myself, I love the world. I love nature, I love myself. I am love for my community, my community is love for me. I am mycelium, mycelium is me.