Today’s topic is a little different …
It’s taken me some hemming and hawing to write this blog post, mainly because I want to be gentle and have it well thought out.
So today’s post is… well, it is for those of us who have fought inner demons and struggled daily to pull ourselves back to sanity.
On a very personal note, I hear and get so many comments about what I should feel about myself and my body, comments about my journey and how I don’t love myself or appreciate who and what I am because I have a goal and a desire to get to better health…
So let’s start here …. Below is a pictures taken in a previous life 🙂 I was called hot and I was definitely in great shape outwards. Yes, I was “hot” or what have you … I was also terribly insecure, needy, sad and my insides definitely didn’t match the outside package.
So one day, albeit many years later I woke up and DECIDED to change it.
And that decision brought with it so many opinions.
So hear me kindly when I say ….
Today when I work out, eat clean, follow a different lifestyle or learn about food or have opinions about a healthy lifestyle for me and mine…. PLEASE stop taking it as an affront to what YOU are doing. It doesn’t make me better than you, it doesn’t put me in a league where Im perfect and always eat the “right” things. I fail even more than I succeed.
As I continue on this journey it’s come to my attention that I do need to make it clear ….
I don’t hate myself, I don’t think my rolls are disgusting, I am not embarrassed about my thighs or big belly, I have no problem with my “flat” ass. I am totally fine with how my body looks and I am working my butt off to get it healthier so that I CAN keep appreciating it.
This body of mine has seen me through beatings in primary school by nuns and some really harsh teachers, fetching water from the river so that there was water to shower, helping my grandmother pick coffee, stand for hours on end with my patients as a nurse and probably the most important thing in my life… Carried to term, helped me deliver my babies, breastfeed them and now be able to just provide for them emotionally, physically, mentally and financially.
My passion for learning new things that make me feel better and healthier come from a genuine place of curiosity and want …. I am honoring my body and thanking it in the best way I KNOW how.
This is why this is such a hard piece to write, because it means I have to be open and raw and vulnerable, it means I have to look closely at those things that make me feel less than or as though I am failing.
You see, I know what it is to be the wife who wasn’t looked at the same because of baby weight, the biggest/fat friend, the pretty fat girl, the girl who those exes would meet and smile because “ she let herself go”, the mum who couldn’t play with her kids coz it was too exhausting.
The woman who was fighting a battle no one would see because I was taught strength meant SILENCE.
Until it was all too much.
And I took my choice back because I was dying inside.
Most of you have heard my fitness story, and the results I have gotten and I’m still getting from that journey.
What you don’t know or see is the relief and freedom to OWN myself.
The self doubts that still do come, the worries and human feelings of inadequacy I do get every week. But most of all the SELF LOVE and CONFIDENCE in the knowledge that those too pass.
There are tons of us and I choose to surround myself with those who celebrate women LOVING themselves through the seasons of their life.
So my call to action for you today is, when someone close to you is making changes, be sure to offer your support instead of judgement, choose not to ridicule them, or tease them.
Allow them to OWN themselves because you don’t know what they are feeling on the inside.
Most of all wherever you are in your life …. OWN yourself and celebrate those things in your own BODY that you think you hate.