I feel like I’m on a receiving wave where I’m magnetizing beautiful gifts, surprises, luck, love and money to myself left, right and centre. And I’m on it because I’ve been caressing, nourishing, loving, nurturing and honouring the goddess within.
I’ve been anointing her - my inner feminine, the goddess within, my Shakti energy - in oils and medicinal balms on every single wound around receiving I’ve accumulated over this lifetime in this strange world we live in, a world where the feminine (within us all) gets to have her plate full with unlearning quests and shadows to lovingly shine light on.
That was a metaphor. Although you will certainly find me moisturising with beautiful little herbal oils I make for myself at home after every bath ever since I healed from 2023’s eczema outbreak on my legs, a symptom of a dried out life (energetically, emotionally, spiritually, and consequently physically).
What I’ve actually been doing is something so tiny, and so simple, it makes complete sense how profoundly it alters my mind and Venus-ifies my relationship to self love, beauty, abundance and being comfortable with receiving.
I made four intentions for myself at the beginning of January as an act of self devotion. Four is my lucky number in so many ways. I don't wanna call them resolutions because that word somehow implies to me that I am in need of "fixing," which I'm not. I believe that we are all already perfectly imperfect, and whatever point of evolution that we are in is always perfect for the moment.
I'm going to share my most favourite act of self-devotion: It is to give myself at least one tiny luxury or one moment of decadence every day, just because. Like, warming my food on fire instead of microwave (it's a quirk of mine) and buttering my roti (India’s lunchtime flatbread) real nice, instead of rushing through lunch because I couldn't be bothered to care for the experience and I just wanna get food "done with."
Some days, it’s lighting a candle in the shower even if it's just for ten minutes. Or taking the time to make my favourite chamomile sleep brew before bed.
Wearing beautiful clothes when I work from home, which has always been an almost spiritual practice for me. Some days, doing my make up just to feel sparkly at home. Wearing jewellery at home. I've always been a very visual, Venus-ruled being, and I've known all my life that clothes, jewellery, adornment and make up deeply enhance my state of mind. Nothing depresses me more than sitting around in torn, raggedy clothes because I'm at home. This obviously doesn't apply to everyone, and so many find great comfort in it, but I've recognised how it affects me and decided to work with it.
I’ve embraced the fact that my at home fits are the most important vibe, actually, because that’s my intimacy with myself and the energy of my life.
Wearing what feels like sustainable luxury to lounge at home feels like beauty, abundance and conscious well being to me.
I am well past the “good clothes are for outside (i.e for other people), while torn and faded whatever clothes are for the home (i.e for you)”
As someone who works from home and works for home, I’m always making my home beautiful. Making me, my clothes and my flesh vessel feel more beautiful, while I exist in my home, is a natural extension of that energy. Life looks a lot like this ever since I fully accepted, embraced and loved on this side of myself, and it’s felt fruitful for my overall well being.
I check my "give yourself a moment of luxury" off my list everyday and I look so forward to it. I’m so productive about this particular intention that sometimes, I fulfill it several times a day, just to be thorough ;)
On special days when it's possible, I'm open to expanding to giving myself a bigger treat or indulgence too, just because.
I want to cultivate a normal of tiny, daily acts of giving myself the gift of the most coveted, most precious currency of this time - my attention. My loving, caring, focused attention.
Little acts of luxury are the most nourishing food to the inner feminine, the goddess within. She thrives, blooms and flowers when she's treated special just because she exists. We crave this from our lovers, and I wanted to begin by establishing how normal it is for me to regularly receive and deserve it from myself.
I feel like this tiny, simple act everyday is one of the most potent feminine healing, receiving-wound healing things I've ever experienced.
And that’s because it's not tied to a reward, it's not something I push for later until I've "earned" it. It's a thing in itself on my to-do list. It's super rewarding to have separate little treats to give yourself when you complete a hard thing or stick to a new habit. But this particular intention of giving a little moment of luxury to myself is a habit and an act in itself for me. It's a rewiring that my worth isn't only in what or how much I do. I deserve good things, period. No "if I do this, then I deserve that."
I am inherently worthy of, designed to and nourished by receiving beauty, goodness, care and love just because I am. And that's the nourishment that the best work and the best art is created from. And I feel like my being in this frequency, not like a secret indulgence but like something I’m proud of, share with people and speak openly of, is an initiation. Older versions of me would have witnessed someone else doing this and felt irritated, angry, judgemental, disdainful, felt so many things that all centre around the essence of “I was never allowed to do this, I never allowed myself to love myself this way, why does SHE get to do it and enjoy it?”
It can feel so radical, weird, crazy, “privileged,” “entitled,” and all that BS to just tangibly, truly claim that you deserve goodness just because you exist. Because we live in a world that literally groomed you into staying small all your life to be seen as a “good” and “humble” person. That groomed you into believing that your worth is only in how much you do, how much the patriarchy can extract from you, and also btw however much you do is never enough. But you’ll keep striving anyway, hoping to be worthy of love.
How dare someone become the glitch in the matrix by giving themselves a little love, a little treat, a little self-care, without any reason? How dare I state the nice, lovely things I’m doing for myself, without clearly providing evidence of how much I have suffered, what miseries I went through, how bad this world has been to me, and how therefore I deserve to have this practice for myself.
Of course, it makes complete sense to write here how I’m just emerging out of severe trauma, depression, being betrayed by someone I love, and ALL the things that happened in 2023. But, honestly, I thought to myself today, why should I?
When I was putting a shorter version of this on my Instagram story today, my favourite place to share AND a hotbed of reactivity, I immediately had this warning voice in my head that said that I should add to the piece of writing how I really need all this after the way that my life has been, after this immense heartbreak, depression, death & rebirth I’ve experienced since October. How I was so traumatised I haven’t been able to show up to my business for months, how much I spent on therapy, all the dark and dreary truths to justify my luxury. Because, otherwise, everyone will think that I’m so spoilt and so this and so that. I mean, sure, I’m Marie Antoinette just for talking about slow living to so many people. I’ll probably get hate from some angry, bitter souls whose struggles look different than mine.
And then, I thought, eww.
I’m no longer available for trying to justify pampering, spoiling, worshipping and adoring myself. I’m no longer here participating in this weird game we play of being able to speak of good things only if I offer immense misery to precede them.
Even if all of this shit never happened to me and my life was just fine, I still deserve self devotion, self worship, self loving, self treating.
Even if all of this shit, or other kinds of bad things, have not happened to you (good for you) and your life is just fine right now, you are still worthy of giving yourself moments of decadence, luxury, goodness, beauty, abundance, fun, silliness, playfulness, all the juice, just because you exist.
Just because you exist.
Be a cat. Learn from cats.
Maybe the deeper practice for so many of us right now, after having survived a pandemic and all that, is to stop listing reasons why we deserve good things.
Stop requiring reasons to use the beautiful crockery, candles, bougie handmade soap or whatever.
Stop normalising giving people clarifications of our trauma in order to make it okay to share with them the good things that we are doing for ourselves.
Happy Venus day <3
My pièce de résistance for at home fits are the handloom PJs I designed a few years ago, in a collection inspired by the dainty, elegant refinement of ancient Indian miniature art. It's a buttersoft, handloom, herringbone weave kala cotton from Kutch, with a side panel detail of handloom tissue Chanderi - a gossamer, royal textile from it’s namesake town called Chanderi, MP. It glistens oh so subtly and looks like the graceful, wavy line quality of clouds in those paintings. These joggers were my Indian nayika expression of the classic side-striped tracks.
Everything beautiful about this intimate home wear garment is in the tiny, tiny details experienced only in real life by its wearer - the way a miniature painting is enjoyed upon careful contemplation by its rasika. It’s worn here with a buttercream hued camisole I thrifted from a vintage French label.
Wearing these heritage artisanal textiles for comfort and cocoon at home feels like true princess life, like a modern nayika who cares for herself enough to demand the softest, handcrafted, beautifully detailed of garments for her own gaze, her own skin and to be relished privately for herself at home.
This is so beautiful and such a healing reminder for the inner feminine.
I loved this..
“Little acts of luxury are the most nourishing food to the inner feminine, the goddess within. She thrives, blooms and flowers when she's treated special just because she exists.”
I heard the voice of my inner feminine inside say “Yeah!” almost grumpy that she doesn’t get this everyday.
It makes me think of ojas, the sweet nectar of beauty and love that lubricates our bodies and lives, preventing them from drying out.
Micro-practices are so effective as well. I feel called to add a drop of luxury into my everyday, purely because I am.
You write with such Venusian grace Oorja and I’m so grateful for you sharing. 🍯💛