Hi!
I'm not sure how many people are seeing this blog yet, but I am going to give this little place on the web my best effort.
Since this is my first post, I will just say a couple things to preface:
This blog is about learning how to recognize your self-worth. It is about realizing that you are who you are, and no one can take that away from you, and it's about coming to accept who you are, as a whole. Not just loving your eyes. Not just loving your smile, or your bust, or your hands. I am here to hopefully make you see that all of you is worth loving.
My name is Kristy, and I have been chunky on a good day and fat on a bad day for most of my entire life. I can remember my mom taking me to the "pretty plus" section of the kids clothes at Sears every summer for new school clothes. When I was a kid, I never saw myself as anything other than me. In high school...that was a different story. So for the longest time, I just wore black. Black slims you, right? That's what I'd heard from every Southern woman I'd ever known. So black it was. Black men's t-shirts, black jeans, black everything. I had no idea how to dress. I didn't really know about makeup because I had a very strict mother. I barely knew how to do my hair. : ) So I did what was easy: I hid my body as often as possible.
When I got a little older, I figured things out. Found some cute clothes, found the makeup aisle at Walmart, life was good. I was happy with myself.
And then...I had a 65 pound baby.
Not really. I had an almost-8 pound baby with whom I gained 65 pounds during pregnancy.
One day, when the baby (somehow, she is always "the baby" when spoken of!) was about 3, she came into my bedroom as I was getting dressed and said, "Mommy, you're fat!"
Talk about a broken heart. I was absolutely devastated. I was almost in shock, because I honestly and truly don't see myself as "fat." I'm just me! I'm Kristy with the green eyes and the gap in her teeth! But I would never label myself as fat, even though it is the truth. I couldn't believe that my beautiful Birdie, with that gorgeous face, could ever say something so hateful and I sat down on my bed and cried my eyes out.
But then I saw her peeking around the doorway, wondering what she had done wrong, and I realized then that she had no idea what she'd said. I cuddled her up and kissed her. And it was that moment in my life that I vowed that I would never do anything to warp my daughter's blossoming self-perception.
Our daughter is almost 6 now. I still haven't lost the baby weight. I don't really care if I lose it or not. I am heavy, but every year's physical proves that I am healthy.
So, here I am.
I really really hope that I don't sound like a self-help book. I loathe them. Way too hippy-dippy sunshine-and-rainbows for me. But I do hope that I sound like a woman who is confident with herself, because I am. The only thing I want to do is project that confidence onto others.
Two numbers that I am not afraid to share:
29 and 22.
I am 29 years old (the only time :) - I will be 30 in November!), and I am a size 22. Yep, a 22.
If you take anything out of this blog post, please let it be this:
These numbers do not define you. As important as you think they are....they mean nothing.
One of the things that I learned from a very special man about 10 years ago was self-affirmation. I have done them ever since. I stand in the mirror, I look at my outfit, and I say to myself, "I am enough." Self-affirmations don't have to be sentences long! They just have to be true. And the truth is that I am good enough just the way I am. Big arms, belly, and double chin.
I am me. And that's all that I will ever be.
