The Mirror and the Inner Critic
When you look in the mirror, what is it you see?
Do you see those five extra pounds you can’t seem to lose no matter how hard you try? Do you obsess over the wear and tear your life has traced along the edges of your eyes? Or is it that old acne scar that mocks you in the center of your forehead?
Why does it seem like no matter how hard we try, we always end up picking ourselves apart one imperfection at a time?
The reality most of us face in the mirror is that we all have things we cannot, will not, or do not want to love about our bodies. For some, those things are merely minor cosmetic annoyances and for others, well, let’s just say those things weigh enough that they haunt us in everything we do.
The Journey to Self-Acceptance
I would be remiss if I said that I didn’t find myself relating to both the former and the latter at different points in my life. I have been slightly inconvenienced by my vanities, been rendered completely immobile by them, and been everywhere else on the spectrum in between. But today, and most days at this point in my life, I find myself surprisingly in awe of my body. Some days I am indifferent, sure, and on occasion I find myself trapped listening to overplayed tapes, but mostly I think I look pretty fucking spectacular.
So, how did I get here?
If I said that it was alone and without effort, that would be a lie. I have gone to lots and lots of therapy, I run introspective support groups, I journal and write often, I educate myself on the falsity and dangers of diet culture, and I have done an Iron Man’s worth of work dismantling the male gaze indoctrinated in me.
The Power of Community in Transformation
That is my part of the equation, and it is all important work, but most importantly, I haven’t done any of it alone. I have climbed this esteem Everest with a community of women trekking alongside me. With women that love me, that root for me, that have seen every layer of me, and still think I am fucking beautiful.
The truth is it’s easy to get lost when we go inward. It’s easy to be deafened by the shrieks of self-doubt. I can’t even count how many times I have been betrayed by my own inner bully. But sitting with friends, real friends that have the ability to reflect back to you what they see, not just at your core but on the outside, that is where the real magic happens.
Transformation happens in the reflections of those that love us, for better or worse.
My truth is that I was baptized in the waters of the adoration of my tribe of women, and I came out reborn. Reborn so that now when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a body tainted with surgical scars; I see the survivor, no, the warrior that my friends see. Now when I touch my loose belly skin, instead of feeling shame or the need to fix, I feel skin that stretched to create and birth not just my children, but my best friend’s godchild. And my arms aren’t soft or saggy; they are shaped just perfectly to fit around not just my loved ones but, more importantly, myself.
Now, the same mirror that once haunted me is a portal to my own infinite pool of self-esteem.
Rethinking Health, Movement, and Body Image
Maybe this all seems a little overly sentimental. I get that. When I sat down to write this, I planned to talk about my health journey. I wanted to stress the importance of having a healthy relationship with food, that starving your body and killing yourself at the gym isn’t just not worth it, but also dangerous. This is all true, and it is an important part of the conversation, but for me, I am realizing it’s not the most important part, and it’s certainly not the last.
I do want to name that I value movement. I love to hike, and walk, and dance. But those things aren’t accessible to everyone, and my belief is that if you walk or dance or hike or ride bikes for the sole purpose of altering your body in a dramatic way, you’ve already lost. I know because my truth is that at my most active and skinniest, I hated my body the most.
Loving the Body You Have Right Now
What I want to stress and hope you get out of reading this is that you can learn to love your body just as it is right now. You can learn to wake up every morning, or at least most mornings, look in the mirror, and without weighing a certain amount or compulsively plucking your eyebrows or injecting poison into your skin, you can look at that person staring back at you and say, “Damn, I look pretty fucking good.”
For me, the way I have learned to do that is by surrounding myself with women that see every bit of good and beauty in me and reflect it back to me in prisms and rainbows.
They show it to me when I am low. They show it to me when I am winning. They show it to me when I am on my period in baggy sweats. They show it when I need it the most, and when I don’t need it at all.
To have validation that is consistent, irrefutable, and without condition isn’t just invaluable, it’s unreplicable.
I admit, I have a bias here. Community is my love language. I think I would simply wither away and die without a few good friends to call home. But I cannot deny that my self-esteem, my joy, and my wisdom all thrive when planted in the soil of my community.
What if we didn't have to try so hard?
Here is what my community has taught me: we don’t have to earn the food we eat, bodies can be different and still be beautiful, big is beautiful, bald is beautiful, skinny is beautiful, fat bodies and skinny bodies can both be sick, skinny and fat bodies can both be healthy, movement is important but not as important as moving in ways that feel good and fun, and the prettiest people can take the best and the worst selfies (lighting really is everything).
Most importantly, my community has taught me how to love my body without question, contingencies, or consequences. And in a society that puts so much pressure on all of us, but especially for women to look like an airbrushed magazine cover when we roll out of bed each morning, what could be a greater gift?
If you want to start seeing what others see in you, the first step is letting them hold the mirror. So, what are you waiting for?
Start seeing yourself through kinder eyes today in This Body, My Home: Self-Love During the Holidays, sign up for free here.