I don't know whether to begin this post with, "Many of you may know..." or "Many of you may not know..." because it's difficult for me to gauge how I'm perceived when it comes to this manner these days, so forgive me for the opening of this post. I guess I'll find a middle-ground between the two. ;)
Many of you may or may not know about my struggles with body image. Loving myself has been one of the most difficult journeys I have ever been on. After being teased by strangers, friends, family at some points, even boyfriends over my weight, I spent many years hating myself. I won't get into it in detail in this post, and I'm not sure if I will ever open up completely to anyone about it, but I struggled with an eating disorder for the greater part of my adolescence trying to reach a standard of beauty. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to bring myself into recovery after spending years going back and forth with my disorder, and have been in recovery for quite some time now. I would love to say "recovered", but anyone who has struggled with disordered eating and tendencies knows that the struggle is always there, it's just about how you manage it, and therefore I will forever be in recovery.
I spent so much time relying on others to love me, because I didn't love myself, and I have finally broken free of that. I wish I could say that I am ALWAYS body positive, but that is untrue to say about anyone, and that's okay! The point is that I do love myself more often than not these days and I want to help anyone who is struggling reach that point as well.
This month what I want to do is a series of posts about self love and body positivity, and this is ilthe opening piece. I want to share my experience of finding myself with y'all, and I hope it's a positive thing! I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to hear from other readers who are learning to love themselves! Feel free to comment or email me at ericashoults@gmail.com.
Much love!
I'm in love with the idea of you doing a series of this!
ReplyDeleteBecause just coming from experience i understand some of those exact things.
It's extremely hard to have self love/worth, through rude comments, the body image that's portrayed in society, and just a number of things that start OH so young.
I've always wondered for many years why we don't just love ourselves more than we do,why we can't and feel like we have to look a certain way, dress a certain way, or even BE a certain way.
Like WHY on earth do we have to feel like we need conformity to be this one person, you know?
Lol sorry for my kind of rant, but i just want us all to feel as beautiful as we are, and as beautiful as we think we are.
Some may think higher or lower than others in that perspective, but we should all feel gorgeous, and i'm really not sure why we don't, or why we let people break us so easily.
Love you Erica, you sweet peach of a lady!
And just so you know, you've kind of answered one of my prayers, because for a while now i've looked for some type of blog or just something that has ANYTHING to do with self love/worth, body confidence/positivity, you know what i'm talking about!
So thank you SO much for making this!