When Self-Love Feels Out of Reach

February arrives with its familiar flood of hearts, flowers, and messages urging us toward self-love. For many of us living with disability, chronic illness, chronic pain, trauma, or body grief, loving ourselves or loving our bodies can feel distant or even unreachable. When you have spent years surviving in systems that judge, erase, or harm bodies like yours, the insistence to “just love yourself” feels ridiculous and impossible.

Within body grief, there is often a mourning for what was, what never was, or what has changed. In that space, love is not always accessible. And it should not be a requirement for worthiness. The familiar phrase, “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself,” ignores how care and connection actually work. Many of us learn how to survive and heal through relationship, through being witnessed, supported, and held in our humanity. Love is not something we earn by fixing ourselves.

What has sustained me, and what I often return to in my work, is self-compassion. Self-compassion does not demand transformation or positivity. It simply asks, “What does this body and nervous system need right now?” It allows us to meet ourselves as we are, grieving, exhausted, angry, numb, or uncertain, without labeling ourselves as broken. For many of us, striving for perfection and being asked to heal on a timeline has been extremely harmful. Compassion offers another path, one rooted in patience and care.

Body neutrality has also been an important companion in my own body story. Rather than asking us to feel good about our bodies, body neutrality invites us to relate to them with honesty and respect. It recognizes the body as a living companion shaped by experience. A body that has endured loss, pain, illness, survival, and change deserves care regardless of how it looks or functions. Our bodies carry us through thresholds of grief and healing, even when the relationship feels complicated.

It is important to name the broader context we are living in. Existing in bodies that are marginalized by racism, ableism, anti-fat bias, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, patriarchy, and sanism takes a real toll. Expecting constant positivity in the face of this is not realistic or kind. For many, simply continuing to show up is an act of resistance. Choosing rest, gentleness, and compassion can be radical acts of care.

If the messaging of love feels especially loud or alienating this month, you are not failing. You do not need to love your body to honor it. You do not need to resolve your grief to deserve support. Self-compassion meets us in the in-between, in the tenderness and uncertainty of body grief, and reminds us that even here, even now, we are worthy of care.