Finding Happy and Healthy
My entire life, I had this idea – thanks to society and parents and relatives – that in order to be healthy, you needed to be skinny. In order to be pretty, you needed to be skinny. In order for boys to like you, you needed to be skinny. It’s been years and years of work breaking down that belief in me. I am still working on it and I have a long way to go. But I wanted to share some photographs from the other day when I went hiking with my family. Matt, Max and I have been hiking more and more frequently – especially since we found a wonderful trail that is about 5 minutes away from our place. It’s perfect and wonderful and I am always SO happy when we are hiking.
This time, we brought our camera camera – not just our phones. I wanted to capture some of these memories from this time in our life. Where the only thing we do to get out and about is diving deep into nature and spending time moving our body. It’s been wonderful! I have felt wonderful!
When we hike with Max, we bring him in his carrier. It’s a great carrier and he seems pretty comfortable in it, but we are looking to get a legit hiking carrier. I may be asking Santa for an upgrade this year! 😉 Anyways, the carrier straps around my waist. When you’re an apple shaped human being, your waist usually has some extra fat around it. And, being a fat person with an apple shape who carries majority of her weight in her belly region, the carrier usually squishes my tummy chub. So, when Matt started snapping photographs of me I instantly felt shame. I felt shame for how I looked, how I felt, and how these pictures were going to come across. “What will people think?” “I wonder how bad it actually looks in photographs… probably worse than I think.” It only took about 30 seconds of internal monologue of me beating myself up and shaming myself into thinking that the only valuable things about me are going to come across visually in the photograph. So, I asked Matt almost instantly to come closer – “Can you make sure the photos are framed this close?” (as I motioned to only my chest and above). And of course, because he knows how sensitive I am to my own visual representation, he moved closed. He snapped some photographs, and I knew I would like them much more than the full body shots. And, we continued our hike…
But as I was hiking, the more I thought about it and the more I felt my muscles carry not just MY body over the rocks and up the hiking trails, but also carry my SON’S body, I realized there is so much more to this body than what is socially acceptable. As I type this, I am rolling my eyes – thinking how fucked up society is and parents can be and how shamed people are into thinking that they are GROSS all for the way they LOOK? Anyways, so as I was walking and hiking my SECOND hike for the day – all while carrying my 25+LB baby on my back, I realized I am an incredible human being and my body is insanely powerful and strong. It doesn’t matter that I have fat on my body – I am healthy! I am a healthy person who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, takes care of her skin, eats her vegetables, drinks LOTS of water (like, a lot of water), and I get exercise at least 1 hour daily… I am a freaking human being doing her absolute best in a pandemic and doing a pretty amazing job at it. And for some reason, I have been made to believe that my WORTH is based on my APPEARANCE?! My worth from society’s viewpoint is based on my jean size and not how I treat people? That just does NOT sit right with me. And I am sick of having society and instagram and people throw it in my face that for some reason our worth as human beings is based on our appearance. It is just false. It is not true. So that is it. And as I was having this realization, I stopped mid-hike and asked Matt to take some photographs of me – fully body. And I felt proud. I felt happy. I felt insanely strong!
I may not always have these exact same thoughts – as the way my brain has been brainwashed and programmed my entire childhood and growing up has taught me to think a different way – but I am working on it daily to ensure that Max knows his worth isn’t valued because of what he looks like or what size clothes he wears. His worth is based on how he treats the people he loves and the respect he shows people. Learning to love myself will be a journey. I am enjoying learning to love myself and learning how to pass on healthy traits to Max. I am breaking that cycle that I have been a part of for far too long. I am calling it her. I have the chips. All the chips. Including potato chips because I am fat and I like chips!
