Learning to Love

I find it amazing how easy it can be to love people.

I love my husband, and I accept all the things that one might call flaws, even when I don't necessarily see it. The same goes with my parents, my sister and brother, my friends...

 

It is so easy to truly love someone and accept them for who they are...

Except for yourself.

 

 

 

The old saying that " you are your own worst critic" is completely true.

I look at myself and see everything I don't like.

I'm harder on myself than I am on anyone else.

I critique and bash every little thing I think is wrong.

 

 

 

 

In my mid-teens I was nearly 200 lbs. I was pretty active throughout that time, playing softball and such, but I never took care of what I ate and downed Mountain Dew like it was a liquid life support. The summer before my senior year, I got serious on trying to lose weight. I didn't even do anything too drastic. I started doing some workout videos on hand and stopped drinking regular sodas, switching to diet one's instead. I probably dropped ten to fifteen pounds before school started back.

 

From the summer of 2007 to the fall of 2008 I dropped almost fifty pounds, going from a size 14/16 to a size 6/8. Of course, I worked my but off then, hitting the gym nearly every night, because I had time to do that. Know what the sad part is? I never really took the time to really appreciate what I had done. I still remember thinking that I was still pudgy, that my flab was overlapping my new shorts.

 

Pregnancy has forced me to put back on a lot of that weight I lost. As much as I love the little girl growing inside of me, I have moments of panic that I won't be able to get it back off like before. However, I'm also realizing that I don't want my little girl growing up with a complex like I have.

 

I was always a bigger girl, even when I was little. I was bigger than most of my friends and cousins. My sister and I got into the habit since we've been older where we just talk negatively about ourselves. We didn't realize the effects it would have on those around us, like my oldest niece who just turned ten. The first time we heard her say something about being fat I think she was six or seven. I think my sister and I both nearly flipped a freaking wig. We instantly realized that our negativity could have rubbed off on this sensitive, impressionable little girl.

 

Since then I think we've been more cautious about what we say in front of her, and I realized that If I don't change my outlook and language about myself, then my own little girl may pick up on such negativity about herself as well.

 

 

 

After all, how do you tell someone that they are beautiful just the way they are, but hold yourself to a different standard? How do you help your child love themselves, mind body and spirit, if you can't seem to do that as well? I want my little girl to grow up confident no matter how she looks on the outside. I want her inner beauty to be just as important as the outer. I want her to love being her, and to enjoy each phase of her life without obsessing about the physical, because it really isn't the MOST important thing. I want her to take care of herself, yes. But I don't want her counting every calorie and freaking out over every breakout. I don't want her to constantly compare herself to others and think she is lacking something.

 

It is important that I change my outlook, so that my daughter's outlook growing up will not be as skewed as mine was/is. Your beauty shouldn't be based on how much you look like a model or how many boys will like you. Your beauty should be based on your integrity, your personality, and how well you take care of yourself, not physical perfection.

 

Maybe you have never had this problem, but I know others, like myself, have.

I hope to remember that there is more to life than "being thin" and "perfect skin".

Those are nice and there is nothing wrong with either, but it isn't everything.

Life is what you make it, and I want my daughter's memory to be mommy being confident, loving who she is as a person not obsessing about being the media's definition of beauty.

I want to learn to love....myself.

To be confident in myself.

To look at myself as a healthy, beautiful woman... not because I'm perfect, but because I'm imperfect and there is still something beautiful about that.

 

So here is to all of us, learning to love.