Is it possible to love me?

Even now I remember one of my first ever therapists. Sweet old lady - completely blind - and she wrote me a note I still have: love your fat. She even put it in Braille. I am not sure I caught the bigger message that she and many others have been showing me how to embody since then, my 12 year old self could not imagine loving a fat body. The shame of the word itself lodged in the fleshy rolls around my middle that even my grandmother once responded to with “ew” - I don’t think she realized she had that reaction, much less how I never forgot it.

How do you love a body while being so ashamed of it? How do you take care of a body you just want to hide? Is it even possible to love oneself? Is that a thing? I can say it now - I can look myself in the mirror and say “I love you” - with a straight face. But it was not easy, even a few years ago. Possible? Yes. Natural - still not so much. AND, I know now about the beliefs that I formed as child - a pre-teen, a teen and a young adult - and how those thoughts left unchecked WILL actually kill me. Like, I will overeat until I die, or eat sugar until my toes fall off or just keep making bad decisions until I run out of money and freeze to death.

There was a point where I figured out what needed to happen, and then I had to decide to do it - to love myself exactly the way I am - and to care for this one body I was blessed with and to care enough to floss (or at least brush my teeth once a day), eat healthy-ish, be active, file taxes, pay bills - adulting. But from a sense of I deserve to live a healthy life. I deserve to enjoy sleep and being active - and my family deserve to know I am taking care of myself. So I did. Not all at once, and certainly there have been mistakes. But I can honestly say that I have “put in the work” to appreciate myself, and start to feel like I can have a life I love. I CAN love me.

So, I will. I hope you can see that for yourself, too. If not, I may be able to convince you. I will start with getting myself there - being kind to myself, in my thoughts, in my actions - and I will give away what I learned. Nobody deserves to be put through the negativity, judgment and shame that hurts on such a deep level, it’s like you are doing it to yourself. If that is you (or was) I hope you will take a stand for your life, too, and decide that you deserve your love and your best choices and you, too, can build an intentional future - one where joy and freedom are possible.