Hi friends,

Amelia, here. In the subscriber survey you all lovingly filled out, many of you said that you wanted to hear from me more often, so here I am not so long after my last letter to say—hello! I love you! Happy Saturday!

Today's email is all about self-celebration. I like to think of self-celebration as self-love's second-cousin. Self-celebration is lesser-known (see self-celebration's 363 million search results compared to self-love's 2.8 billion). But I'm here to say that I think that's a shame because self-celebration can be way more fun! 

If you've followed my work for very long, you know that self-love is one of my foundational feminist practices. I've posted about it. I've written about it. I even created a whole selfies course about it. 

What is self-love? As I wrote in my Selfies for Self-Love zine,

For me, self love is a daily practice of defining, accepting, and caring for myself. It’s a commitment to getting to know myself so that I can create a life that best suits me. It’s a lifelong romance, where I prioritize basking in everything unique about me and being honest about my unkind proclivities.

I think self-love is a crucial practice for reclaiming our personal power in a patriarchal world that always seeks to diminish and control us. Like I wrote above, it's romantic, honest and a lifelong commitment that I have to practice every day.

But sometimes, y'all…I just wanna have fun! I want to wrap myself up in all my self-love and throw myself a big fat party. I want to love on myself, not just have love for myself. In other words, I want to celebrate myself! And you! And all of us! Woohoo! 🥳

I've been thinking about self-celebration lately, because today marks exactly 1 year since I defended my dissertation…from my kitchen table…during the pandemic.

I spent 7 years working on my PhD and that moment was nothing like I'd imagined. There was no poorly-lit conference room, no awkward photo with my faculty advisors, no free champagne after. Instead, it was a grueling 5-hour zoom call followed by a swig of gin and a collapse into bed.

But there was also a cake! A beautiful, special-order, frosted ball of sugar that I got to slice into and toast myself with. A reminder that even if it was just me and my partner and my cat in the room, we were still celebrating my major life accomplishment! With cake! My favorite way to celebrate!

As my PhD-iversary neared, I knew I wanted to celebrate again. I mean, it took me 7 years to get at PhD, so I want to spend at least 7 years celebrating it! And moreso, celebrating myself! Celebrating my perseverance, celebrating my tenacity, and celebrating all the people who helped me accomplish this.

So I made myself another cake! This one was a box-mix and rainbow-sprinkle endeavor, but it's a celebration all the same. A reminder to myself that—I am radiant. I am worthy. I am a celebration.

Now, I want to be very clear that the moral of this story is NOT that you need to go get a PhD to be worthy of self-celebration. In fact, I offer myself up as a counter-example. Please don't make yourself do 7 years of intense intellectual and emotional labor just to celebrate yourself! 

You are worthy of self-celebration every day you wake up alive. 

Let me say that again—you are worthy of self-celebration every day you wake up alive!

Sure, maybe every day isn't the day you throw yourself the party or bake yourself the cake. Some days, we're just practicing self-love. We're remembering our basic care, and making it through the day. 

But please, don't forget to celebrate yourself sometimes too. Self-love can be hard work, and we should celebrate it with something special from time to time. We should celebrate ourselves with something special from time to time. And may I also suggest some fun?! Whatever fun looks and feels like to you. Add a bit of that to your self-celebration, too.

Now, I know that self-celebration feels terribly uncomfortable for some folks. Some of you might even call self-celebration self-centered or narcissistic. I don't want to invalidate those feelings, but I do want to insist that celebrating ourselves is a vital part of sharing joy. And as Audre Lorde says:

“The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” 

YES! Sharing joy is a bridge for understanding things we don't share. Most of y'all reading this aren't celebrating getting a PhD, but by sending you this email with my #cakepics, you get to share in my joy with me and get to know me better. Each of you has triumphs I've never experienced, but if you share your self-celebration with me, I get to celebrate you and get to know you better, too.

At the end of the day, self-celebration isn't just about the self. Self-celebration is about all of us, learning to celebrating each other by celebrating ourselves. And remembering to celebrate all those who support us in the process.

If you'd like to join me in some mutual self-celebration this month, I have a gathering coming up that I'm really excited about:

On Saturday, June 26th, I'll be hosting a Saturn Return Support Group to help folks look up their natal charts and navigate the hugely transformative experience of our Saturn Return. 🪐 This is a gentle gathering for astrology novices & pros alike. I promise to celebrate you in all your glory if you sign up. Learn more and join me at Rec Center on 6/26.

And if talking about your Saturn Return isn't your idea of fun (because who am I kidding about Saturn Returns being fun…), you might also enjoy diving deeper into a conversation I had about body positivity and fat feminism on Overthink Podcast! 

This is a really fun philosophy podcast where I got to chat about radical self-love, an intersectional approach to fat feminism, and more. The hosts Ellie & David also created a really cool reading list from our conversation. I hope you'll tune in. 🎧

In the newsletter survey, a few beautiful readers requested that I include links of what I've been reading lately, and prompts to help digest and apply what I've written in each newsletter. I loved those suggestions, so here's a bit of each to wrap us up:

Links to things I've been loving lately:

• The simple planetary miracles of happy grass & dancing shadows
• Honey Girl by Morgan Roberts—a queer romance for summer that I read while soaking up the sun in my heart-shaped inflatable pool
• The aforementioned heart-shaped inflatable pool that I intend to get in every day this summer
• The new episode of home-body podcast featuring Mary Grace Allerdice & Zaneta Sykes, two glorious guides I'm honored to know through the magic of the internet

Gentle prompts to invite self-celebration:

• Make a list of things that make you feel good. Focus on pleasure and fun. Ask yourself: what makes me happy? what feels like a special treat?
• Hang your list up somewhere that you can see it everyday.
• Looking at your list, choose one way to celebrate yourself this month.
• Put that on your calendar as your very own self-celebration party.
• Share your plan with me if you want some gentle accountability to follow through with your self-celebration.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, babes. I'll be back in your inbox with more musings soon. Until then, CEL-E-BRATE YOURSELF, COME ON! And let me know what you're up to, so I can celebrate you, too! 😘

xoxo, Amelia