Hello beautiful people!
As you all may know, I took a bit of a long hiatus after two blog posts, but the other day, a friend encouraged me to start back blogging (shout out to Eva :))
For this blog, I decided to blog about my self-love journey, and how that's been going, as well as some tips to help anyone who may be struggling with this as well.
The first thing I can tell you is that you're not alone. I have/am struggling with my self-love journey.
It all goes back to elementary school. I mean I wasn't necessarily thinking about self love; I was more focused on my self image.
I've been overweight all my life since for as long as I can remember. When I was extremely young, I would invest in these exercise tapes that I would get from Wal-Mart or Goodwill (mainly Goodwill), because I was so unhappy with my body. Those didn't work.
Then came middle school; this is where things got a bit worse. And when I say worse, that's exactly what I mean. My weight got so bad to the point where I had one girl come up to me in the library one day and ask me was I pregnant.....
PAUSE....
What do I look like being pregnant...in middle school? Really?
Then in high school, people would continue to criticize me about my weight, but it wasn't as much as elementary and middle school. But the more that they criticized me and made fun of me, the less of a care I gave.
In the present day, being a college junior and 20 years old, no one even pays my weight any attention; I mean some people might see me today, and say "wow, she's fat." But hey, I learned that they're just stating the obvious at the end of the day.
I wish that's something I would've learned sooner; to just say you're only pointing out the obvious and that's making you look dumb.
As a matter of fact, there was a picture that I saw maybe on Instagram or Facebook, and it said, "You are not fat. You have fat. You have fingernails too, but you aren't fingernails."
I can't tell you how much that made sense to me. During most of my childhood, I would cry and get so upset because people would call me fat and say "You're so fat; that's why no one likes you."
Honestly, I thought "being fat" was the end of the world. I thought no guy was ever going to find me attractive because of my flaws.
Remember my friend Eva that I mentioned in the beginning of this post? Well, she really helped me to open my eyes.
One of the most wisest things that she told me was "Your looks and body has nothing to do with it. You are one gorgeous woman!! Don't ever play yourself like you aren't. Beauty from within will always outshine what's on the outside."
That's what I failed to realize this whole time; beauty on the inside was the most important. I wish I had met her sooner, because I would've had a whole other perspective on this.
On top of that, she told me that she was on this journey as well so I wasn't alone. It felt really good to have her there because usually people wouldn't understand what I was feeling; they say they would relate, but I just didn't feel that they could, Don't get me wrong; there are a few people who had gotten through to me, but I would just be a little bit stubborn and forget everything that they would say because I would go from trying to love myself to going back to my original feelings, but when I met Eva, I could tell that she was 100% truthful, and I couldn't have asked for a better friend/woman to look up to. Because of her, I will never go back to my old feelings. Because of her, I know that I'm worthy of someone's love. Because of her, I know that self-love is the most important love of all; it's the best love to feel.
Ever since our talk, I've been focusing more on me. Below, are a list of things I've done to improve my self-love journey and I hope these tips will help you too :)
1. Get a mani/pedi
2. Listen to more uplifting and positive music
3. Journal how you're feeling that day. Journal to God; tell him what you're feeling and why you feel this way. Let Him know your fears; let Him know about your stresses
4. Spend some time with the Lord; open up your Bible, read a few chapters, and write down what you learned in order for those lessons to apply to your life.
5. Pamper yourself; this is honestly the best thing you can do in order to love yourself even more. Put on some music, light a candle, meditate, drink some tea, and relax.
6. Go for a walk/run
7. Pray :)
8. Do some yoga
9. Look in the mirror and compliment yourself. If you don't know what to say, just look in the mirror and smile at yourself. This is something that I've been doing a lot of lately. It definitely helps.
10. Accept yourself and love yourself as you are
11. Believe it or not, cleaning up can help you feel better. (Shout out to my Mom for this one)
12. Write a love letter to yourself; this is most definitely a confidence booster.
13. Dance like no one's looking; this truly makes me happy and gives me practice to be myself around other people
14. Sign up for some hobbies; I personally want to do some pottery, go to a yoga and dance class, and go to those painting classes, as well as learn to play the Guitar and Piano.
If you have tips of your own, feel free to share them in the comments below :) I'd love to read them.
Remember, ALL of you are beautiful no matter what society says. You should learn to love yourself the way that God loves you. God loves you, and Created you. Therefore you should know that you're beautiful. No matter what weight you are, no matter what anyone else says, God makes no mistakes <3 :)
Love always,
Faith
