Hello friends,
I’m on a consent roll so I’m going to keep rolling with it..
I’ve been learning lots about self-consent this week. It’s been fascinating and eye-opening to me.
It’s like, we often say that parenting is really about US, that we are the ones needing to show up for change and healing, not our children. That if we don’t love ourselves unconditionally, then we will struggle to unconditionally love and accept our child; that we need to show ourselves compassion before we can truly show others that same compassion.
Well, self-consent is all of that, except in the consent-based sphere! It’s the fundamental idea that we are going to struggle to create a consent-based culture, and respect our children’s and other people’s consent and boundaries, and even to really own our own Yes and No, if we do not practice self-consent.
Self-consent, as defined by Sophia Graham on the Love Uncommon Blog,“is about treating your needs, desires and limits with respect. It is about being curious about yourself, and making choices that express your authentic self. It is central to learning to have a consensual relationship with others because it embeds consensual practice in your life and all your interactions.”
Graham goes on to say that self-consent is about having a consent-based relationship with OURSELVES. That means tuning in to our own body and being and really hearing what it is we need or want, what we are unsure about, and what we don’t need or want. This happens BEFORE we then express that consent out in the world - so, before we agree to something, or model consent in a relationship, or say no.
Before the expression of consent out in the world, we need to actually know what it is we need and want to express. That is self-consent.
I relate to this so much because, for the longest time, I was the person staring at a menu and having NO FUCKING CLUE what I really wanted to eat. Just paralyzed by indecision in so many aspects of my life, not because I couldn’t make a decision (I was fortunate to be able to have choice in a lot of things), but because I genuinely didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what my actual needs were (rather than the needs others had told me I had), I didn’t know what I enjoyed (as opposed to what I was good at, or told I was good at), I couldn’t find that inner voice, or intuition, or whatever you might want to call it, that tells us what we need. The voices were so many - and none of them were coming from a place of authenticity.
None of them felt like they were really coming from me.
Because ultimately, our agency and autonomy needs to come from a place of inner knowing - knowing who we are, how we want to show up in the world, what our genuine needs are. And it requires a ton of vulnerability. And self-awareness. And holding space for all that we are and have been through.
Sophie Graham has illustrated self-consent as a wheel. Check it out in her blog right here. She sees these as skills we can practice in order to get in touch with ourselves more, and they include attunement to self, discernment, emotional regulation, interaction with others, zone of influence, and review, celebrate and plan.
I came across another blog that links self-consent to Parts work, and that was super interesting! Here it is if you want to go deeper. Parts work essentially acknowledges that often we don’t feel a clear answer because actually we have many, often conflicting, emotions all at once. It’s what we reference when we say, “part of me feels ——, but part of my tells me —-” or along those lines. And we can practice to hold them all while also honoring what we do want. I’m super new to this, I haven’t looked very deep into it at all, so any further information would be appreciated if you happen to be super into Parts work already! I shared a post by Gabriela Blanco on this and I believe she has spoken more on it too, so worth checking out!
Back to self-consent: I am still learning about it and working on bringing a practice of this into my own life, because now I recognise that if I am to truly create a culture of consent in my home, if I am to call myself a consent-based educator and an unschooler, if I am to model consent to my children, then I need to have a working practice of self-consent. I can’t brush my own consent under the carpet and just focus on making everything else “consent-based.” Nope.
Consent is just as much about us, as it is about our children. A bit like parenting. A bit like unschooling. It fundamentally starts with us - there’s no getting out of it!
Thanks for reading and as always, I love hearing back from people and I always try to reply :)
Lots of love
Fran x
I don’t really have anything of value to add here but I just want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts/writing. A lot of this stuff is new to me and it gives me a lot to consider. I feel like we should just know ourselves but most of us don’t really. Not yet at least.