"And I said to my body, softly, 'I want to be your friend'. It took a long breath and replied, 'I've been waiting my whole life for this'." — Nayyirah Waheed
Do you remember the first time you felt insecure about your body?
That sudden feeling of shame over something that, only a few moments prior, you had no idea was something to be ashamed of?
For me, the timeline is a little cloudy...
The first time could have been someone commenting on the size of my nose.
Or when the kids at school called me "raccoon" because of the dark circles under my eyes.
Or the time a family member joked about how I "still didn't need a bra".
Or maybe it was the time someone told me I had big eyebrows.
I'm not 100% sure when the FIRST time was,
But I AM sure that the first time I felt shame about my body,
It was because someone else told me that I should feel that way.
Now, it wasn't as explicit as someone saying "You should be ashamed of the size of those eyebrows!"
And they may have had zero intent to cause harm with their comment.
But the reality is that a comment was made and underneath it was the message of:
"You're DIFFERENT. And being different is BAD."
And so began an era of:
Shame
Hiding
Comparison
Fixation
And insecurity
The interesting thing about insecurities is that if you do nothing about them, they don't just go away...
They continue to grow.
And so I ended up wasting so much time and energy on hating my body.
But at some point I realized that all of these beliefs I had about my body,
They didn't belong to me.
They were GIVEN to me by someone else.
Society, friends, family, lovers.
I wasn't responsible for them being there in the first place.
But I WAS responsible for keeping them around for so long.
And if I wanted to feel differently about my body, it was on me to make that happen.
And so I learned how to love myself.
It didn't happen overnight.
And it wasn't always easy.
But it WAS worth it.
So, if you are plagued with negative, overly critical thoughts about your body remember,
You didn't come into this world thinking that way. You learned to do that. So, you can also learn how to love your body. The catch is, that won't happen by accident.
You will need to take responsibility for making that shift.
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