Please don’t feel ashamed of your body. It’s so normal to have stretch marks and scars.
Our skin protects us. It houses all the delicate and intricate workings that are on the inside of ourselves. Our skin is so necessary, so brave and so beautiful.
Your body is so amazing that it actually grows with you. We just need to extend a little grace to ourselves sometimes and to remember that our bodies have the ability to adjust to whatever we are going through. It’s a superpower. And the imperfections (even unique ones) are pretty dang awesome.
You are alive today and that means you have another day to honor and feel proud of who you are, so please don’t waste time beating yourself down. Spend that time lifting yourself up, instead.
When we stop seeing ourselves as defective, it changes our whole outlook. Give yourself permission to feel good and be proud of who you are, inside and out.
If you’re ever in doubt, I’m here to remind you how beautiful you are.
If I was still in an abusive relationship, I never would have been able to post this picture. There would have been MAJOR consequences. I was told that if I put any picture of myself on social media without him in it, that I was an attention-seeking whore. Even photos that only showed my face or just a picture of me and my children, I was told it meant that I just wanted other men to want me. He was completely obsessed and our conversations became mostly about this. I deactivated my social media accounts a lot when we were married just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I would announce “Tired of Facebook so I’m taking a break! ✌🏻”, but what people didn’t know is that he was driving me mad and keeping me up all night with his obsession. He would evaluate every “like” I got from every single person. He would stalk them online and would create scenarios in his head: if it was a male liking my post it must mean I’m being intimate with the guy, or if it’s a female, he said her husband probably wanted me or that they and I were in a group relationship. Complete head-spinning madness. I thought when we got married and moved into a home together, that his insecurities would lessen. I ignored the red flags. It actually got much worse. He tried making me feel bad about who I was and what I looked like to make me withdraw into myself and his plan worked for a while. Today I speak the truth about myself. In this picture I see a strong, self-aware, courageous woman. The opposite of what he wanted me to believe about myself. It took me a while to get here and it took a lot of hard work to reverse the damage my abuser left in my soul. If you’re dealing with this type of emotional abuse, I hope you know that you don’t have to live this way. Don’t believe what your abuser tells you. You’re amazing and worth being loved the right way. Peace. Love. Courage. -M October is Domestic Violence Awareness month and I will be sharing my stories and the stories of other women, throughout October, to raise awareness and help victims and survivors find their strength and their voice.
Have you ever been told you are too much of something?
Too outspoken.
Too quiet.
Too happy.
Too sad.
Too weak.
Too strong.
Too successful.
Too emotional.
Too nice.
Too fat.
Too thin.
Just too much.
We hear these kinds of phrases when people want to fit us into their box of things they are comfortable with. It can come from wishing they had more of your “too much” or it can even be remnants of unprocessed feelings or trauma they may have experienced.
I want you to really pay attention, to what I say next.
You are not responsible for how other people perceive you. (read that again)
Should you be a kind person? Yes. Should you be respectful of others? Yes. That’s not what I’m talking about here, though. When you are being true to who you are and someone tells you that something you love about yourself, is “too much”, let it go. You’re not meant to carry that.
Photo cred: Kimber G
I’ve been told I’m too soft spoken and too loud, too weak and too strong, too sad and too happy, too fat and too thin, all by different people. This speaks more about how everyone may see you differently and less about who you are as a person. You are not meant to carry their feelings about you.
The important thing is to not let anyone dull your shine. If people in your life can’t handle your strengths and what you bring to the table, they aren’t your people anyway. Your people are going to see you as the perfect amount of everything that you are. Your people are going to appreciate the vibes you bring into their lives. Don’t be worried about making the wrong people uncomfortable with what they deem “too much”. You have permission to protect your energy from the people who don’t appreciate you. You have permission to be whatever the heck it is that someone says you’re “too much” of. Carry yourself proudly.
Don’t try to fit yourself into other people’s boxes. You don’t belong there. That’s their box, so you let them worry about it. If you try to become what other’s want you to be be, it just fosters unhappiness within you and who wants to waste life being unhappy? When you love someone – could be a parent, spouse, sibling or a friend – you can take what they say about you to heart and turn it into what you believe about yourself. If you start to worry if you’re too much of something, ask yourself where it’s coming from.
You are not a burden. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be listened to. You are good enough. I am proud of you and you are not too much of anything.
Relatively Monica 