Public Display of Self Love

"You are beautiful. You are deserving of love. You are lovable. You are good enough.”

When I met Sara Kaplan, it was a windy day in San Francisco. I rented a bicycle and rode to the Presidio’s waterfront, near the Golden Gate Bridge. We sat at a weathered picnic table and she told me her story.

“There was so much shame involved with being so overweight,” she said. “I felt so alone. One day I just said that’s it. I am going to write a letter to everybody I care about and I am going to ask them for help. I am going to try to create accountability for myself by cultivating the support of my own community.”

As soon as she hit send on the heartfelt email to more than fifty of her friends, she started to cry. “I was mourning the life that was gone. I knew from that moment I would never choose the same life again. It felt like the universe was telling me, ‘Yes, you are ready.’”

In her letter, she said ‘who wants to exercise?’ and her rule for herself was she would say yes. 

“No matter how scared I was, no matter how uncomfortable or intimidated I was, if somebody invited me to exercise or offered to help me in some other healthy way, I was going to say yes.”

She invited her friends to a party in her backyard. Her voice wavered slightly as she stood up in front of those gathered and shared her weight loss goals for the coming year. Then, she asked for help. “Invite me to exercise with you,” she pleaded—and they did.

She started a blog about it on Tumblr, Public Display of Self-Love, and spent the year taking morning walks with friends, attending dance classes, and trying new things like saying yes to a white-water kayaking trip. “I’ve exercised with hundreds of people. Friends, couples, even strangers.”

Strangers? 

“They just call me up and say ‘Let’s walk’ and I’m like ‘Yes, let’s do it!’”

Sticking with healthy food choices was difficult at first. In the spirit of self-love she made her motto “Progress, not perfection.” 

“In the beginning, I put up the prettiest picture I had of myself on the bathroom mirror and on my refrigerator so my first thought every day was, ‘Oh, I’m pretty!’” 

She started saying affirmations in the mirror, “All the cheesy stuff they say to do, I did. I would stand there and look into my own eyes and say, ‘You are beautiful. You are deserving of love. You are lovable. You are good enough.’ Repeating it, I would bring myself to tears.”

I would stand there and look into my own eyes and say, “You are beautiful. You are deserving of love. You are lovable. You are good enough.” 

Her personal journey resulted in one hundred pounds of weight loss and left her with room for an even bigger idea: Sara is envisioning a world in which we teach children self-love in school—how to love themselves and how to take care of themselves. She went to her daughter’s school principal and pitched the idea. Now she’s teaching classes on self-love for second and third graders.

“Self-love seems equally as important as reading, writing and arithmetic,” she says. “Can you imagine if kids today were less interested in looking for outward validation and felt more secure in their anchor to themselves? That could determine their whole life course!”

Like raising a child, cultivating self-love really does take a village.

The shared humanity of all our struggles, that’s how we touch each other.

“We know that nobody’s perfect. The shared humanity of all our struggles, that’s how we touch each other. Being able to share our imperfections with one another is how we are inspired. I’m not perfect and I’m never going to be. But even knowing that, I still love myself. I know I’m worthy and my community helps remind me.”