Why I was easy.

A couple of days ago I woke up to the harsh reality that I am not a person who thinks from a source of gender equality. In fact, the inequality is so deeply rooted in me, that I sometimes don't even recognise it for what it is. But I am a lucky one. I share my life with someone who wakes me up to this reality. Who hears when I speak against myself. When I suppress my own gender. When I unknowingly disrespect myself, and all women - all while strongly speaking for equal rights.

It's a jungle growing up. We all know that. And I grew up as a girl on her way to becoming woman. A woman I thought should be and act a certain way, in order to be a good woman. The right kind of woman...

What we do as children is follow patterns. We do and act according to what we feel will be accepted, respected and most of all: loved. I don't know where my view of what a woman should be like came. Did I hear it, did I see it, did I experience it, feel it, was I taught it? I don't know, but this was rooted in me: that women wanting too much are difficult. Full stop. End of discussion. Simply difficult. And for a child difficult is not accepted. For a child difficult often means unlovable. And just as anyone and probably everyone else, I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be loved, appreciated and respected. So I worked hard at avoiding the label of being difficult. And so little by little I became easy. And I did a lot in order to be easy. I compromised everything from thoughts, feelings, opinions, wants and desires - all the way to my own body. In the earlier years it was to be able to be like one of the boys - as a woman with the attempt of keeping and/or pleasing a man. I did not see the world through my own eyes, but through the convenience of the man. Now plenty of you may react to this. Thinking things are not really like this. But plenty of you did not grow up as me. And I am 100% sure that I am not alone in this behaviour or in these thoughts. I am also 100% sure that the inequality that still strongly lives in our society is not only because of the man and the attitude of men. It is also because so many of us women don't even realise the way we are treating ourselves. What we think of ourselves and other women. What we do in the search for love. How we mold ourselves. What we compromise in order to keep the peace. To get the respect. This is where it all goes wrong; that we think that we need to change or be a certain way in order to be loved and treated equal. For by doing that, by changing and/or compromising who we are, we as well uphold the walls of inequality.

I am not being "easy" anymore. I have stopped persieving my own feelings, needs, wants and opinions as trespassing. To express oneself is not to be difficult (!!). This I've really had to tell myself. And never in my life have I been so loved. So appreciated and so respected. Because never in my life did I love, appreciate and respect myself as much as I do now. That's why never in my life did I think I was good enough to be with someone whose values, whose heart and whose love is as good as the purest of golds.


Lovelovelove,

Carolina

To look like this.

To be 34 and pregnant. To simultaneously go through two things that change one's body. Stressful for many. At least according to what one reads, sees and keeps on hearing. So much talk about changing bodies. About pre and post child figure, breasts, butt, thighs... And with all this comes sooo, so many wishing and hoping and yearning and yelling for that body they once used to have. Not the body they have. But I know so, so many who never were happy when they did have the body they're wishing for now. Who, whatever they had or all that they have, always seem to find something else that would be better. A constant focus on what is missing. What is too big, what is too small, what is too heavy, too saggy, too perky, too tight. Of course - it is good to take care of one's body, but to put our whole worth and all this time on the way we look - not so good. In fact more harmful than good. It makes us spend a whole lifetime dissatisfied. Never content with what is; fearing what lies ahead. We become torn between the past and our future, therefore missing the whole point of why we live. We have such a hard time accepting ourselves. Accepting things that make us unique. Just because (we think) we're not "perfect".

I've let the obsession and stress over my looks take up a big enough part of my life already. Having now reached the point where the beauty of life is beginning to leave its marks and memories, writing its story on my skin, taking shape in the forms of my body - and now with the magic of having become a temple for a little one's growth - I don't want to spend my time thinking nor talking about pre or post pregnancy body. I want to be what I am - exactly at this point in time. Without the stress of what I might have looked like or what I might become. I want to let the result of this journey be. To gracefully respect what life is: change. Change in heart, change in mind, change in spirit and change in body.


Lovelove,

Carolina

She dances in the dark.

Four years ago my mum had a terrible Mother's Day. She witnessed as her daughter's life fell apart. She sat there in the midst of her daughter's desperation - caring for her, comforting her, giving her remedies to help her find even a single moment of release. I cannot even imagine how she must have felt witnessing all of that. Seeing the emptiness, the confusion, the panic and the immense sorrow in her daughter's eyes. Knowing what her daughter would now have to go through: The loneliness and sadness of a betrayed and broken heart. The reality of having been put aside, of a future all of a sudden gone. Of trust abused and mistreated. She would have to mend it all. To get back on her feet, to trust and to rebuild her whole reality.

But she saw her daughter rise from the ashes. She saw her mend her broken heart, her be tender to its bruises. She witnessed her daughter get back on her feet and build her whole new life. She saw her never lose hope and never second guess reality. And everything that she now had the chance to abandon - her trust in good, her belief in people - she chose to hold on to even more tightly. She found her love for the experience. For what it gave her, for all it opened up in and for her. And through it all she felt an immense gratitude to the reason of it all. She saw her daughter not defeated but stronger than ever. How she dared go through it, be true to herself, and finally find the peace and happiness that now shines in her eyes.

Four years ago, what was my mum's worst Mother's Day, was in reality the biggest blessing of them all. It was the day that all my mother is, and all that she has taught me - about life, about its path, about trust and about faith, about forever remaining true to the belief in good - was finally put into force. It was the the day that all the seeds my mother had planted along my path found their life and finally got to bloom and to blossom.


Love you, mamma. Och tack. ❤️

Carolina