Over the holidays, I purchased the book Beautiful You – A Daily Guide To Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary for my daughter. While going through pages of the book to see if it would be something that she could benefit from, I started to become intrigued. We decided as a family that starting today, January 1st, 2019, we would challenge ourselves individually and together by using the daily guides the book offers. I’ve never used ‘self help’ books before, but a few friends have explained to me how they have benefited from them. I am not sure what I will achieve from this, if anything, but I’m curious to see. Since talking about challenges in my first post, I thought I would incorporate this into my blog as well. Having anxiety will make it difficult for me to share publicly the daily challenges with the ‘world’ since I am a private person when it comes to personal matters.

So, let’s begin. This year, I am hoping to be more accepting of my flaws when it comes to my body. I workout daily to keep myself physically and mentally happy. However, one thing I need to work on and accept is that my body sometimes bloats. I get insecure when this happens, I don’t fully know why, it’s natural. I grew up skinny, no matter what I did I couldn’t gain weight, and I tried…I know, you’re probably thinking, poor me. I was made fun of, called names, and even had rumors spread about me that I was either bulimic or anorexic. On days that I would bloat, I looked like I was pregnant. I remember ordering food from somewhere once and the lady, in Chinese, asked Garrett how far along I was….I didn’t know who was more embarrassed, her or I.

This year I hope to get away from body shaming myself, ignoring beautiful photos just because I am not happy with how I look in them. I believe I can change this by not critiquing myself so much. Instead of judging photos that reveal my stomach, I should embrace those photos, I should even post those photos. There was a picture that was taken of me last summer while on a trip to Las Vegas. In this photo I stood next to a tree, my back is to the camera, and I am standing in a pose that causes a crease in my back. This happens to everyone who stands this specific way. This picture was actually one of my favorite pictures taken of me but I couldn’t get past the crease. Why couldn’t I? I know I am fit, I know I am healthy, but I assumed others would judge and think it was disgusting.
This leads me to another hope for this year regarding body imaging, I hope that the world can change how they view others. When using social media, it is easy to edit a photo or even just use a filter. Why do we need to? What is the worst that can happen if we don’t? We will still receive likes. Just know there will always be someone who has something negative to say, but why should we let that impact us and our own feelings? It really says something about the person being negative, not us.
Here’s to 2019 and posting those photos of ourselves that we think need to be edited.