I’ve been thinking a lot about self-love recently. Not the kind of self-love that is easy to hashtag: bubble baths, candles and desks you never keep clean for more than a day (guilty as charged). Those have their place, but the self-love I mean is muted. Messier even. It doesn’t always look pretty on the outside. 

For me, self-love has been more about sitting with myself when I’d rather run. It’s about slowing down in a world that only seems to speed up.  If I’m honest I’m not good at it. Certainly not in the first instance. I’m impatient with myself, quick to criticise (myself), and often entangled in the thought I need to be doing more.

Mindfulness as a Buddhist Practice

Mindfulness as we know, and practice today actually stems from Buddhist practices. I always like to visit the core of something, and so my desire to learn more about mindfulness took me on an adventure into learning more about Buddhism. This is where I am able to anchor myself. It’s not an instruction manual, more a reminder that everything is in motion. Nothing is fixed. Impermanence can sound scary, but it’s also hopeful. It means change is always possible. 

One of my favourite teachers is Thich Nhat Hanh. He writes about how presence is a kind of miracle: just by being here, just breathing, just existing fully in this moment. The latter is deeply profound for me. In relation to self-love, it’s about being content to stay with myself, however I happen to be. 

Mindfulness & Music

And then there is music. Music has always been my companion since I was a child. It speaks when I cannot. It comforts. Sometimes it’s a feeling the music evokes. Other times it’s an artist who names the exact emotional I feel. 

Some days I feel like I’m moving too fast for my own soul. I’m ticking boxes, racing against bills (working to survive). I feel like I’m trying to catch up all of the time – and then a song finds me. This week, while sketching stickers late at night with Halsey’s Manic in the background, a song caught me – and the playlist started from there. 

The Still Learning Playlist

The playlist is not upbeat, and definitely not a dance around the kitchen whilst cooking or cleaning kind of playlist (which I have been known to do). It’s gentler than that. It’s reflective, raw, sometimes a little broken, but always with a thread of resilience running through it. It begins with Halsey’s Still Learning – because aren’t we all? It weaves through voices as varied as Alanis Morissette, Bjork, Epik High, Billie Eilish, Annie Lennox, and Ren. It’s a patchwork of languages, styles, and moods, but together they echo the same truth: we’re still learning to love ourselves.

I think of it as a kind of meditation – not formal, not rigid, just something to sit with. Even the task of compiling the playlist is meditative. Self-love is not a destination but a journey, and sometimes that journey is as simple as pressing play and letting yourself listen.