08/03/2022
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I needed to hide my body.
Growing up as a woman in a strict religion, my relationship with my body and my femininity was rocky to say the least. I felt ashamed if I ever wanted to show some skin, but no matter how much I covered up, I still felt deeply wrong.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized how unhealthy and dysfunctional this core relationship in my life really was— the self hatred and the judgment and the way I constantly picked myself apart. It wasn’t until I let myself relax a little and feel some love and appreciation for my body and all that it does for me that I truly began to feel like myself in my own skin.
I don’t share this to make a statement about religion or to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t be doing. I share this because I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I know that women all around the world are at a deep disconnect from their bodies because they feel they are too sexual, not sexual enough, not curvy enough, not skinny enough. We pick ourselves apart because that is what the world has taught us to do.
But what if instead of picking ourselves apart, we chose radical self love? What if we chose to accept, connect to and live in our bodies in the moment, exactly as they are, without judgment? What if we stopped trying to police ourselves and each other and recognized the inherent beauty in each one of our bodies? That is what radical self love means to me.
So if you are reading this, I hope you choose to appreciate your body today, to thank it for all it has done for you. To sit in the sunshine, and maybe let it hit your bare legs, to tip your head back, to take a deep breath and to simply appreciate the feeling of being alive, judgment free.