real.life
OVERALL RATING
A mother who radiates self-love and confidence vaccinates her child from a future of battling internal deficits and low self-esteem..... "Don't take a picture of me, I don't want to be photographed looking like this " -said this woman as her husband tried to capture her children playing in the pool with her. At that same moment I just happened to be admiring her luscious locks and cursing my gene pool for 'blessing' me with this head of straw. I went on to lower my sunglasses so I could further examine her physique in creeper mode. Beautiful ivory skin with these locks that went on for days, not shredded, not jacked, not skinny, body fat yes but so did 100% of the rest of the pool, maybe she worked out, maybe she didn't......really what does FIT look like? It saddened me to think that she was so distraught with herself she would risk capturing moments in an effort to avoid having to see herself. Body image/dismorphia is and will always be an uphill battle for me and likely thousands of you reading this- although the good have increasingly outweighed the bad, there will always be those moments of self- loathe. I'll be the first to tell you to love the skin you are in, embrace your perfect imperfections, live FLAWesomely, but also the first to admit that it requires daily practice and it's not EASY. For so long I've lived under extreme circumstances where everything was black OR white. This last 6 months I committed to letting myself explore the 'grey zone' which has become quite evident that it's actually full of beautiful colors including pink wines, blue sky's, yellow beaches, tangerine sunsets, chocolate ice cream and red kisses. Am I as lean or as 'shredded' as I would maybe like (and that's only based on what I know my body is capable of producing as per past experience) -no. And for as much as some minutes I have to choke back the 'self ridicule', I wouldn't pass up a moment of being present in all these memories.....