Before & After

The other night I was surfing Instagram and noticed so many before and after pictures for people who have lost weight or overcome eating disorders.  I thought to myself, how cool would it be if you could take a before and after picture of your mind?   Don't get me wrong, celebrating your success over both of the above is amazing, but you cannot take a picture that shows what you have overcome inside yourself.

It would be pretty amazing if we could share a before and after of overcoming self-loathing and body hate.  If we could show people what we looked like internally before and after learning to love ourselves just how we are.  If we could say look at how much I have changed internally.

If we could show the world that emotional and mental health are also important.  That the before and after of learning to love yourself matters.  Express that overcoming our own minds is also extremely important and totally worth celebrating.  The problem is that so many people only believe that can be seen physically.  That you have only succeeded at something positive if you can show the before and after on social media.  If they can see that you lost or gained weight they say that is amazing, congratulations, you look beautiful.  It would be just as wonderful if you could express those emotional and mental changes in an image. 

It would be even more beautiful if people could look at what we have done inside ourselves.  That we no longer wake up daily and say yuck I am disgusting and I hate myself.  If people could see that we have this amazing love for ourselves, our life, and the world in general.  That one day we decided we were enough.  It would be extraordinary. 

Event though we cannot portray these changes in an image,  we can show this change is by sharing our voices and experience with others.  That is why I started this blog.  I wanted to be able to share my growth and success with self-love and body positivity.  I want to help someone else realize how amazing and worth-it they are. 

That their bodies are beautiful because they allow you to live, love and enjoy life.  That the standard society has set for us is not the standard we are required to live with.  The only standard we are required to meet is our own.  The love we allow ourselves to give ourselves.  That you are allowed to love  your body no matter what someone else thinks about it.  Yes, you can choose to make your body different or better if that is what you want, but you only have to do that because you want to do that not because someone else thinks that is what you should be doing. 

I am not saying to be unhealthy, I am simply saying to love yourself exactly as you are and if you want to make a change, lose some weight, dye your hair pink, gain some weight, do nothing but be how you currently are.  Do that.  Do what you believe is best for you because in the end, you are the only person who knows what is best for you.  Loving yourself does not mean that you never do anything to be better or different, it just means that you allow yourself to be happy regardless of what the world is saying.