I was just remembering how I used to compare myself to pictures of girls I saw in magazines and think, ‘if I looked like her my life would be so much better.’
People would like me, they would want to do things with me, I would be so powerful.
But then I met a lot of the girls who were in those photos and I found out they thought the same thing I did. They looked at other girls and thought they themselves weren’t good enough.
So here we all were thinking we weren’t good enough, wasting time playing small at life because of what we thought we lacked.
Living for a standard we had begun to worship and believe in so strongly that it made us go crazy starving ourselves, spending thousands of dollars on supplements and lotions and clothes and literally anything that would make us look at ourselves in the mirror the way those girls looked out at us from the glossy pages of the magazine.
We forgot how to look in the mirror and love the woman we saw.
To see her for all of who she was, a woman of purpose, a woman of strength, a woman full of love and life.
A woman to celebrate.
I’m 41 and these days, instagram is my magazine.
The women I choose to follow come in all shapes and sizes.
What resonates with me when I look at them is their authenticity.
The intention behind their work.
The way they talk about their experiences.
Their unique beauty.
I see all these things in my sisters online because I’ve learned to value them in myself.
The true work is not tearing down what other people are doing or judging them for where they’re at.
It’s looking within at our own selves and taking responsibility for the work we need to do to love the person looking back at us in the mirror.
You are so beautiful.