Sink into Peace + Self-Confidence

But wait, what?

I’m sure every generation looks at the up-and-coming with a rising sense of fear. Wide-eyed, I watch my own generation with disdain at the amount of superficiality we have succumb to… and submitted our children and youngsters to.

Most my own age can barely look someone in the eye and learn to love the role of an inspiring conversationalist.

1,100 words. BOOM!

Specifically? Photoshop. Digital Manipulation.

Knowing that much of what you are looking at is bullshit is one of THE most refreshing things young women can do for themselves.

My personal experience with distorted body image? I owe it to the malleable young thirteen year old me who adored the gorgeous ads in high fashion magazines.

I loved the lanky, gorgeous women--skeletal structure wrapped in flawless skin and expensive fabric.

I wanted to be just like them.

From age 13 - 23, I ate very little as a result. Constantly striving to be as thin as possible.

Long before Jennifer Lopez and the Kardashians gave rise to the love of full figured, bottle shaped women, I resented my quickly thickening thighs, by insta-love handles brought to you by puberty, my huge breasts that allowed most of my middle school population to know and refer to be solely as "Tits".

I exploded into womanhood with waves and waves of insecurity, bullying, and shame/ creepy sexuality about my body. I felt so much self-doubt, and eventually learned so much about self-hatred in those younger years.

I would stare at these gorgeous models without an ounce of fat on their beautiful bodies, mystified by their narrow hips and tiny waists.

I'm sure I had to have known a LITTLE about photo enhancement and that these photos were altered? Right? I'm sure I knew that, to a degree.

Years of this useless battling with my body ensued.

Ten years later, my body has returned again and again to its own natural homeostatis, roughly the same exact weight and shape I've been since the seventh grade.

My aunt who in my young twenties would say, "I seriously don’t have thoughts like those. I don't speak to myself negatively. I don't obsess over my body at all."

I thought she was full of shit. Legitimately thought it was shocking she would even say something like that.

True, she worked out, on her own schedule, not obsessively but semi-regularly enough to have toned arms, a six pack, and one of the best (real) butts the world had ever seen… Yes, she ate mostly healthy foods and loved to cook fresh meals, but no, she did not ever obsess over what she ate, was in no way a miser for counting calories and restricting her diet in any way.

Yet there she was, in my eyes, flawless, and apparently, confused about how someone could talk to themselves like such shit.

I thought she was full of shit for years.

Until finally I realized: she wasn't.

For me, this relaxing into my own being, getting into the best shape of my life, and genuinely loving myself exactly as I was started when I was twenty-three. Ten years too late.

I hope to help all women, and especially young women who can avoid this USELESS stage of self-hatred and shame about their bodies that I experienced for a decade.

For the last five years I can promise you exactly as my aunt had always said: I don't think those thoughts anymore.

I geninuely cannot relate any longer, because truly, I know better.

I have experienced self-love and self-acceptance, and once you get a genuine taste of this… you might waver here and there, but I highly doubt you could return this self-induced state of anguish.

If I can help any woman shift her mindset to see the beauty in front of her instead of the flaws she is taught to perceive by advertising agendas on a rampant mission to make women feel like shit about themselves… I will have served at least one purpose of mine in this lifetime.

Here is what I mean, and I'll use myself as an example.

Side by side, here are a bunch of images.

And let me just say, once you know better with who you are, unaltered… you will laugh and cringe and shake your head at grown women who still think they are fooling people.

An example would be a beautiful blonde blogger I knew, who with pride showed me an app that apparently she thought would trick her followers into pretending they'd never seen her in real life.

We took a picture together and as I went to post it she shouted, "Wait! No! My arms look too fat."

She proudly showed me her app that allowed her to quickly add a tan, erase her pimples, shrink her arms nearly half the size in width, suck in "fat" around her chin and neck, enlarge her breasts, enlarge her eyes and lips, whiten her teeth and eyes, and slim her waist.

I watched with raised eyebrows and thought, "Damn. A lot of modern girls don't know sh*t about Photoshop."

She posted a picture of us and admittedly she looked fabulous in the freshly edited photo.

Two dimensional images of ourselves can clearly be deceving. The woman presented on her Instagram was quite literally half the size and a totally different facial structure than what I saw before me, in real life.

The point? Be real.

Do I love high contrast, saturation, and a good filter on my own photos and self-portraits? You bet.

But do I tweak my waist, arms, eyes, lips, breasts, teeth, and belly before I post my portraits. Hell no.

It's insulting to myself and a SHIT TON of work to continually pretend to be something you aren't.

I am here to tell you the harsh (and easy AF to achieve truth): you are good enough as you ARE.

Relaxing into what you are and loving yourself RIGHT NOW (even if you WANT to be thinner, in better shape, or more toned) is true confidence.

Liking yourself NOW becomes the REASON you will WANT to workout or practice yoga or get in shape… because you LIKE yourself and realize these efforts are about TAKING CARE of yourself. You know, to live a long and sustainable (and hopefully not miserable AF) life of full of hating yourself.

So, in conclusion:

Love yourself as you are.

Look at these pictures and know that sure, you can look like these photos and enjoy the fakery and shallow beauty as much as you'd like.

But being able to be exactly as you are and like yourself radiates the most genuine sense of condifnece and beauty that stems only from true self-love.

It seems complicated. It's very simple.

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