I am a woman of 33,5 years. 25 of which I have spent hating myself. Hating and ashamed of the body I had been given. Already self-conscious as a three-year-old little girl, hating her large knees. May sound ridiculous to some, but my hate and shame for this particular body part haunted my existence. And this self-consciousness, this harsh self-critique, followed me around and determined my whole youth, taking control of every aspect of my life. I would avoid going out and living, in order to stay deep inside the darkness of myself hating who I was. Disgusted by every inch of me. And if I did get out with the happy and the living, all my energy - the whole experience - would be overshadowed by my fear of someone looking at me and realising the disgust I was. This is what I thought of myself.
It took for me to turn 28 years old, when one day - as I was bending down blow-drying my hair - I caught a glimpse of my knees and it was like seeing them for the first time. Time stopped. Because after 25 years of seeing them one way, I suddenly could find nothing wrong with them. They were simply knees. My knees. My beautiful, strong knees. The same knees my father has. Oh my god, the feeling when you are finally free from a self-hatred you've carried on for so many years. It's like exhaling after holding one's breath for a quarter-century! In an instant I became light as a feather. Air reached my cells and gave new life to the stagnated body I had trapped myself in to. I felt the freedom of a huge releaf.
I believe that everything we go through in life is for our best. With every experience, good or bad, we can choose to make the best out of it and grow into being even better human beings. I wouldn't want to change a single thing I've gone through, none of the years of me hating myself. But I would like to share what my experience of years and years of being steered by this overwhelming feeling of shame has taught me:
Life without the stress of putting one's value as a human being into one's body is a life worth experiencing.
It took me years to get to the bottom of my self-hatred, and from there a journey up to the surface of myself. But it was so worth it. I still have the same knees I was born with, I still have my easily strechmarkable skin type, my fluffy hairs on my lower back (yes, I am pointing them out to you right now!) and my father's big toes. But to me those things are not problems anymore. They are not what define me as a human being. But they are what sets my body aside from everybody elses. What makes me carved out in my own way. They are what makes me a little bit imperfect. And we all need to allow ourselves to be imperfect. Because pure perfection is dull. It's the beauty of our flaws that perfect us. That make us who we are. So if we learn to love what is our weakest point, we will thereby strip the weakness of its power, and we ourselves will become strong.
So this is to the love I feel for my wrinkles of a woman of 33,5 years. Let them wrinkles wrinkle and them eyes twinkle.
It took for me to turn 28 years old, when one day - as I was bending down blow-drying my hair - I caught a glimpse of my knees and it was like seeing them for the first time. Time stopped. Because after 25 years of seeing them one way, I suddenly could find nothing wrong with them. They were simply knees. My knees. My beautiful, strong knees. The same knees my father has. Oh my god, the feeling when you are finally free from a self-hatred you've carried on for so many years. It's like exhaling after holding one's breath for a quarter-century! In an instant I became light as a feather. Air reached my cells and gave new life to the stagnated body I had trapped myself in to. I felt the freedom of a huge releaf.
I believe that everything we go through in life is for our best. With every experience, good or bad, we can choose to make the best out of it and grow into being even better human beings. I wouldn't want to change a single thing I've gone through, none of the years of me hating myself. But I would like to share what my experience of years and years of being steered by this overwhelming feeling of shame has taught me:
Life without the stress of putting one's value as a human being into one's body is a life worth experiencing.
It took me years to get to the bottom of my self-hatred, and from there a journey up to the surface of myself. But it was so worth it. I still have the same knees I was born with, I still have my easily strechmarkable skin type, my fluffy hairs on my lower back (yes, I am pointing them out to you right now!) and my father's big toes. But to me those things are not problems anymore. They are not what define me as a human being. But they are what sets my body aside from everybody elses. What makes me carved out in my own way. They are what makes me a little bit imperfect. And we all need to allow ourselves to be imperfect. Because pure perfection is dull. It's the beauty of our flaws that perfect us. That make us who we are. So if we learn to love what is our weakest point, we will thereby strip the weakness of its power, and we ourselves will become strong.
So this is to the love I feel for my wrinkles of a woman of 33,5 years. Let them wrinkles wrinkle and them eyes twinkle.
Bisous darlings.
Love,
C
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