Loving Your Body

Having the confidence to love your body is complicated for most women. Society and pop culture sell us an idea of the perfect woman and as long as we spend every last dime, suffer through painful treatments, or even have possibly life threatening surgery, then we will be beautiful and worth loving. All that is the uphill battle we are fighting as the average woman. After being assulted it can make things even worse or give you an advisarial relationship with your body. The level of disdain and self hate I have had for my body has been so deep. Angry at my body for not fighting harder, pissed at myself for freezing. So so frusterated with my mind for feeling like I am the enemy to my own peace and joy.

There have been times when I realized I haven't made eye contact with myself in the miror for months. Which would sound crazy to the people I live with because I have spent countless hours moiturizing, plucking, exfoliating, and painting myself. I think I was telling myself the story that, doing all these things are an act of self love. In truth however, it was a desperate plea to make myself lovable. I never had the fully concisous thought that if I just had perfect hair, my husband wouldn't leave me and everything would be ok. I came to this realization when I sat at my vanity on a Sunday afternoon preparing to begin my multi hour "self care" regiment and I just felt exhausted. I thought to myself, Why am I doing this? Would I expect my daughters to do all of this? I tell them they are perfect as they are but my actions are telling them that I don't believe that I am.

For a while I decided none of it was worth it and I quit all of it. Hardly a drop of lotion graced my face or body for months. For a while I was too tired to do it, I was drowning in a deep depression. Once my energy started coming back I found myself wanting to do my beauty routines again. However before I would let myeslf begin I asked myself what was motivating this diesire. Is it that I am trying to be prefect so the people I love won't leave me, or make myself worthy of being loved?

After some deep reflection I learned that I genuinly enjoyed my beauty routines, and if I worked on the mentality behind it, it really could be an act of self love. I now feel that by taking this time to take care of myself, it is a way of proving to myself that I am worth the time, and energy it takes.

To deepen the self love I have, changed the mental state I am in while performing these beauty routines. I tell my body I am grateful for it. I tell my hair that I love it and feel beautiful and magical when I care for it.

In this link you'll find the practices I use to love my body with my mind and actions.