What does self-love mean to you?

Self-love is choosing yourself over and over and over again, regardless of who is telling you that you shouldn't or who is making you feel like you shouldn't.

My wakeup call to self-love was shaving my hair around six or seven years ago. It was the start of me creating a platform which encourages other people to share their stories of self-discovery and the importance of self-love. I want to encourage women and non-binary folk to make that initial move that helped me.

With any experience that you're going through, to know that you're not alone is key to helping you move forward with your journey. I feel where there’s a collective or shared stories, it helps you to feel seen and it validates your experience.

What would you change about the world?

One thing that I would change about the world is to remove all the toxicity targeted at marginalised people.

I feel like, especially as a woman, especially as a black woman, especially as a queer black woman, me existing is defiance. Period. I feel like the world was not built for people like me. It's rebellious for me to do whatever I want to do and to thrive while I'm doing it.

What does self-love mean to you?

Self-love is permission to completely be yourself.

I think the key to unlocking its power is stepping into the things you care about really honestly. It's very difficult to respect and love yourself when you're doing things that aren't authentic or don't feel completely you. The key to self-love for me was figuring out what I cared about.

Once I did that, I respected myself and felt strong enough to start loving and taking care of myself far more.

Why is self-love a journey?

If you're at the beginning of your self-love journey, it's really important not to rush it. Don’t feel like you have to go from struggling to loving every part of yourself. Slowly put more time into the things you love, spend time with the people that really care about you, get rid of people that don't, and start to make specific positive actions in your life.

My journey to self-love probably began in 2017, when I launched a campaign to change the law and worked full-time. I took on far too much, so I decided to make taking care of myself, looking after my body, resting, all those things, part of my routine.

Loving yourself and respecting yourself is a practice in a world that tells you that you shouldn't. It has to be a little bit every day, so take it slow and be honest with yourself.

How can we learn to self-love?

The key to unlocking the power of self-love is questioning everything.

Throughout our lives we’ve been taught so much and we've picked up so many things subconsciously, so question why. If you wake up, look in the mirror and think, ‘I don’t like that’, ask, ‘Why?’. When you question yourself, you can move forward and start to unlock the mechanisms of overcoming that negative thought process.

I’d love to give more people the empowerment to question everything. That really is the most powerful thing. You can't make people love themselves, but you can help them to stop in their tracks and think why they don’t. Because when you think why you don’t fill your life with self-love, there really isn't a good enough answer.

How do you help others self-love?

I think helping other people wake up to the power of self-love really does start within yourself. When you’re starting your self-love journey, the most important thing is just to be kind with yourself. I don't think we all wake up one day and immediately jump to self-love.

I’d say my journey to self-love actually really began with my accident, when I became paralysed. Before I became a disabled woman, I always thought that I loved myself. But it wasn’t until I went through a life-changing event, until I became someone who is now living in a marginalised body and a body that isn’t often celebrated, that I really had to learn what self-love was.

What does self-love mean to you?

Self-love to me is about accepting yourself and loving yourself, even if there are things about yourself you don't like. For me, it’s about treating myself with care in a world that doesn't care about bodies like mine.

My journey with self-love began from a place of really not loving myself, like a lot of trans people and a lot of people in general. I think sometimes you need to reach rock bottom before you can start building yourself up again.

The advice that I’d give to someone at the beginning of their self-love journey is just to be kind to yourself. That's an act of self-love in itself. It's really important to understand that it's not a step at a time – it’s often just a toe at as time.

How do you help others self-love?

I try to help others wake up to the power of self-love by just being my most authentic self, especially for trans representation. I think it’s so important just to be boldly trans, be proudly trans.

Self-love is really pivotal in my life as an activist. I don't think I would be able to do what I do and encourage people to want to change the world if I didn't have this foundation of self-love.