To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. 

Joan Didion, from On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Vogue Essay

I have been thinking quite a bit about my body lately. The 50-year-oldness. The curves and strength. The senses and feelings. If self-respect is, “that sense of one’s intrinsic worth,” and the ability to love is directly tied to it, then I want to feel it deeply and fully. I want to know self-respect in my bones. My body must be where self-respect starts if I am to love, at all. My thoughts and actions must allow my body to love completely. If self-respect is the path to having everything, I want it all.

It makes sense to me that the body is the foundation of self-respect, and by extension, love. I want to be a loving person. That being said, I am not always the best at taking care of my body. I often fail at self-care — which includes things like sleeping well, eating right, exercise, and moderate drinking. All that, the ebbs and flows, the falling apart and coming together are the most consistent part of my mostly inconsistent self-respect story. The best part of failure is the chance to learn, grow, and start again. As many times as it takes. Over and over. Judgement and fatigue and fear be damned.

At 50, I understand self-discipline and self-respect walk hand in hand, and require practice. They require seizing joy, living day-to-day, taking small steps, and celebrating all victories. (I do not want to make that all sound easy.) I hate to think that lacking self-respect renders me incapable of love, but that might be so in a “beautiful inside and out”/body as temple/golden rule kind of way. Through that lens, self-respect allows compassion and faith. Self-respect builds and does not tear down. Self-respect opens the door for the hard work of listening, forgiving, connecting, and breathing deeply through all of it to happen. Self-respect strengthens — does not harden — and softens us in ways the world may not support or celebrate. As perfectly imperfect as I am, I choose self-respect..