Last week I mentioned about how life can change in a split second. That goes for our own mind frame. What I am talking about is that in a split second we can go from feeling good to immediately feeling bad. Or vice versa go from feeling bad about ourselves to suddenly feeling good. I bring this up because recently I had kind of an epiphany in my life. I had someone I didn’t know and I had a dear friend of mine, tell me that I was very beautiful and anyone who had me in their life was lucky. That hit me hard.
Not so beautiful past
So, a little back story. I was always the big girl. The one that felt awkward, quiet, taller than the other kids, but also started to gain more weight than an average child was at the time. I was teased and bullied, started dieting as a child, and never truly felt like I was beautiful. When I started dating, well that was hard too. I felt like I was nothing special. That I was not pretty at all.
Comparing to others
There were times when I would be told I was pretty. I mean I met my husband and we got married, so there is one person outside my family that thought so. But personally, deep down, I couldn’t see it. I had a really hard time believing anyone. So many diets, resolutions, goals, and fads that I broke trying. It was that I always felt that the other women around me were prettier, more interesting, and I was nothing compared to them.
The start of a beautiful change
What happened to change my outlook? First, I knew I never liked the weight I carried. And I acknowledged that I did not have a strong enough willpower to keep myself from finding ways to circumvent a snack, a treat, or two. For me personally, I knew weight loss surgery was my own option to losing the weight. Even after losing 119 pounds, I knew that was only a steppingstone to my new outlook.
I say this because, I was happy with my body, but I still found things about myself that I didn’t like. My hair was too thin, my face was too long, my body was too plain. I still wasn’t happy. Because after I had my son, I kept some of the baby fat on me. When I look in the mirror today, many times, I am not happy with what I see.
Who I am then and now
My epiphany was that I feel beautiful when I love myself. I discovered that I didn’t like the way I looked, because I didn’t know HOW I wanted to look to feel good. I was constantly trying to compare myself to others. To their appearance, their personality. The problem, it wasn’t my appearance, and it wasn’t my personality. I have curves. There are many of them on my body and in places I wish were gone. But they are not gone, they are there every day. And that is okay. Because deep down, it is me.
What I am saying is, it was not until I knew who I was and wanted to be, that I knew how I wanted to look and then began to feel beautiful. It was then that people are seeing a difference in me. A lighter personality, a happier tone in my voice. I am smiling more, laughing more, and joking more. It took the idea of losing me and what I am in this world to realize that this is not what I want in life. I want happy. Need laughter. Crave beauty. I needed to know who I was to know what I wanted.
The battle of beauty
I have friends that are battling with image issues. So, I want to tell them, take a minute and think about you, only you. Who you are in this life and ask yourself, are you want you want to be? Or for those of you that are younger, who are you know and who is it you want to be? What is your personality, your beliefs, your passions? If you don’t know, then that is probably why you are struggling with your image. For me, it wasn’t until I started to realize that I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted any more. Because when I made a conscious effort to rediscover me, I started feeling lighter. Then I started getting noticed and complimented on how I was looking. As my friends have told me, “It is refreshing.”
With great warmth,
