"Love yourself as much as you want someone else to,"

- Some dude's high school English teacher somewhere at some point, probably.

Growing up, I was always chubbier than any of the other girls in my family. My body was (and is) a physical manifestation of all ways I am unlike my cousins, and it separated me from them at an early age. In retrospect, the "otherness" I perceived about my body, while generally detrimental to my childhood self-esteem, did leave me with an important gift: I was unafraid to explore interests that others in my family never had.

Unlike my cousins, I was no athlete, no artist, no genius. I was unpopular my entire early life. Because trying to emulate my cousins in ways that I thought would appease them and my parents mostly ended in failure and embarrassment, I directed my teenage self-development towards becoming as "different" as possible. What did I have to lose? If I was going to be a black sheep regardless, I was going to be the blackest sheep I could.

The chip on my shoulder morphed into a raging emo phase that I'll probably never truly outgrow.

I didn't realize it then, but my upbringing forced me to become my own best friend. It was lonely growing up that way, but it taught me self-reliance, which in turn taught me self-love. And that self-love has become an invaluable guiding compass for me.

During my early college years, I was hanging around a group of Toxic™ people, whose involvement in my life was rife with pettiness and insecurity. Having been reclusive during my early years, I just assumed that rampant drama was a natural part of having more friends than you could count on one hand. After years of hanging around these "friends", it was self-love that woke me up to what I now know to be obvious: you do not owe anything to people who do not contribute to your happiness. The realization was jarring, but I walked away from them without ever apologizing for it.

It was easy for me to utilize self-love evaluate interpersonal relationships. What's more difficult is viewing myself through a lens of unconditional self-love. Deep down I'm still that girl who never fit in with her family or her peers. It takes a constant, unrelenting amount of self-love to trust in my judgement, my opinions, and my decisions. It's what allows me to frankly write what I feel, on this blog, to anyone who may be reading.

Sometimes self-love is ghosting anyone who doesn't realize your value, sometimes it's changing your major three (or four) times to figure out how you're going to make your life meaningful, sometimes it's making a batch of cookies because fuck calories, you want something sweet.

To you, I say, do what you have to do to love yourself. Anyone else who matters will follow suit.

Pink Peppercorn Sugar Cookies

Ingredients (yield: about 3 dozen small cookies, or 1 dozen large cookies)

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks, softened)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg (room temp)
1 egg yolk (room temp)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pink peppercorn
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl, and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream butter and sugar until very pale (almost white) and fluffy. Beat in the egg and the egg yolk, then the vanilla. Scrape the bowl, and beat again. Fold the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, until no streaks of flour remain. Using a cookie scoop, shape the dough into balls and place on the cookie sheet, with 2" of space in between. Flatten the balls using the bottom of a glass or measuring cup. Sprinkle flecks of pink peppercorn onto the tops of the cookies, for color. Bake the cookies for 8-12 minutes, until the edges just begin to turn golden. Remove from the oven, and allow the cookies to cool completely directly on a wire rack.

Blood Orange Glaze

Ingredients

3 medium or large blood oranges
2 cups powdered sugar

Method

Juice the blood oranges (in a juicer or by hand if you're unprepared, like me). Three blood oranges should yield about 1/4 - 1/3 cup of juice. Whisk the juice together with the powdered sugar, until the glaze holds a ribbon when the whisk is lifted. For thicker glaze, add more powdered sugar in 1/4 cup increments.

Assembly

Place the baking sheet with the used parchment under the wire rack, then drizzle the glaze over the cookies. The glaze should harden after about 15 minutes.