25 uplifting illustrations to help you give yourself some self-love

When Amsterdam-based artist Alison Rachel started the Instagram account Recipes For Self Love a few years ago, she had set out on a journey to consciously unlearn many of the harmful ideas that society had instilled in her. These ideas, she found, had for years been a negative influence on her mental health. And yet, letting them go wasn't so easy. Fortunately, she found comfort and strength in sharing the things she learned on her journey in the form of empowering illustrations of and for women. These illustrations — which spread messages of feminism, self-care, boundaries, intersectionality, sexuality, anxiety, ritual, beauty, individuality, and self-expression — today have over 508k fans on Instagram alone.

"Feeling sad and alone most of my life was the inspiration to create these unique illustrations. Struggling with depression since I was a teen it took me years to unlearn a lot of ideas that I was socialized to believe, many of which were negatively impacting my mental health," Rachel wrote for Bored Panda. "I'm still figuring out how to be alive in this world but sharing my thoughts and realizations with others has proven to be a very rewarding process. The more I learn about how to live and love more fully, the more I like to share my thoughts and realizations with my online community Recipes For Self Love. I want to continue growing my online community while spreading awareness and truths that I found to have helped me a lot."

Here are 25 inspiring Recipes For Self Love:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.