A dear friend sent me the picture below today. “You can’t hate yourself into a version of yourself you love.” Very profound words. I have been struggling with hating my body the past few days. Once I became aware of the level of self hatred I feel, I dove in to see how to resolve this.
On one hand I am amazed it has held up as good as it has; a true testament to good genes. But at the same time, I hate the way it jiggles, the fact that I was blessed with big “birthing hips” for kids I never had, and that I have my familiar upper arms. (Think of every old Italian woman you have ever seen with the “arms.”) I also hate the fact that if I was 5’ 6” not 5’ 0” I would have far less weight to lose.
So where do I begin to unravel this body hatred? They say you don’t eat an elephant in one bite, so I am going to break this down to tiny little things I can do each day to start making a change of heart. Over the next 365 days I am committed to do one thing different every day when it comes to taking care of my body and what I think about it. It doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of the year, I will have done 365 things to shift how I feel about my body. Perhaps even learn to love it fully as it is.
I mistakenly thought as I started down this healing path that if I could heal the soul trauma of my past and learn to love myself on a soul level that I would be healed and live a life that reflects self love. I realize now, I am going to have to include the outer body as well as the inner if it’s going to be a total healing. I guess I thought that if I loved myself on a soul level that that would be enough, but you can’t achieve that if you are still hating what is staring back at you from your mirror. It’s all so connected, but who knew???
A tiny thing done differently every day will be a challenge. It will cause me to pay attention instead of living on auto pilot; to be kinder to myself. But I guess that is what this has really been all about…..waking up to my life. I’ve just come out of a 58 year coma….time to start living. Tomorrow instead of waking up and looking in the mirror and hating what I see staring back, I think I will just say thank you to what I see – thank you for hanging in there with me all these years. You are quite amazing for doing that.
