Love is love and pain is pain, beauty is beauty

When I look in the mirror every day, do you know what I see besides a woman DOING THE DAMN THING every single day?

Strength.

 Kindness.

Love.

Pride.

Beauty.

Yes, beauty.

I love the skin I am in, and that should be true for you, no matter what size you are. Think of the industries that would go down in flames if we all woke up one day and felt this way, too. If we all said, “You know what, I love myself,” we’d be so much healthier as people.

I’m not saying there’s no value in prioritizing taking care of your body, trust me. The opposite is true. The motivation for that, though, is what counts. When I go on a crazy diet and my motivation isn’t right, I end up gaining weight when I stop starving myself. You can’t trick your body.

Here’s what I know: I want to be healthy. I already am beautiful. That was true yesterday, it is true today, and it will be true tomorrow, no matter what my size is.

I don’t need an advertisement telling me what beauty looks like. I don’t need them to tell me that tall, blonde, and thin is beautiful. I don’t need them to tell me that [insert whatever bullshit standard of beauty you’ve internalized here] is beautiful. In fact, I don’t need them to tell me anything.

Why? Because I already know what beauty looks like. Beauty looks like self-love.

Having confidence and love for yourself is honorable—but it’s also hard. Trust me, I get it. When I was a kid, I remember being made fun of for thinking I was beautiful and talented. I was taught to internalize, at a very young age, that you just can’t say those things out loud. You can’t openly love yourself—the media, the world doesn’t accept that.

I’ll admit that even writing this right now brings back a little memory pang: I am a kid, in my living room, taking a picture of myself because I think I looked great. Then, the ridicule. I still feel it there, but now I can distance myself from it.

The view, by the way, is so much better from here.

Know that loving yourself is for you, but it’s also in service of those you care for. Before we can love others fully, we have to love ourselves. If we don’t, we can’t truly be there wholly for anyone else—partners, friends, family. We teach people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves.

I grew up hearing people around me spout negative things about their bodies, so I took that into my heart. It kept me quiet. It kept me in a place of self-loathing for some time.

Now, I know the truth: that just like love is love and pain is pain, beauty is beauty. Bask in yours, babe. You deserve it.