BORROWED STORIES + BODY SHAMING

Aside from being 68kg at 37 weeks pregnant, I’m currently the ‘heaviest I’ve ever been’.

I’m a measly 64.2kg.

I’ve never weighed myself, and never needed to try on clothes before buying them, because I’ve been the same weight and size most of my teenaged and adult life.

I’ve always said I wanted to gain an extra few kgs, because at my height not only did I know I could pull it off, but I had this idea that I’d look a little less waif like and a little healthier.

My best friends called me ‘Skeletor’.

But a few weeks ago I put on my favourite denim shorts and I could barely do the bloody things up. I stood there, squatting into them to stretch the freshly washed denim hauling the button closed with all my might.

“Well that’s never happened before!” I said to myself in surprise.

Just over a year ago I wrote about how I skinny I was (you can read that here), and now, I’m up a juicy 4kg, for the first time ever in my life. The ‘extra weight’ has come with less muscle tone, more softness and more squishiness. When I sit in a squat every morning and drink my tea, there’s a handful of fat that comfortably sits between my upper thighs that I can literally grope with my hand.

But to you - you wouldn’t know it.

I’m still tall. And lean. And fit looking. And I know people who deprive themselves of food and watch every single thing they eat to achieve looking like me.

But these changes have crept in with age, a reduction in movement and exercise, and an abundance of homemade choc chip cookies through lockdown (because my cookies are life!)

But with all this change, I also noticed stories creeping in about how my body needs to look toner, fitter, stronger. About how the softness isn’t welcome and needs to be replaced. About how the muscle tone being replaced by cellulite (yes, people I have cellulite!) is unattractive, and how I don’t look as good in a bikini as I used too.

What the actual fuck?

When I see a woman fully owning her self, bathed in softness + squishiness with tummy rolls and cellulite, all I see is her incredible radiance, femininity and beauty.

But as I have begun to transform into this healthy and embodied expression of the divine feminine, I started to criticise it.

Why?

Because I have BORROWED STORIES from a society that shames and judges and criticise anything less than hard core abs and hulk-like quads.

I know that these self loathing stories aren’t mine. And yet they’re sliding into my mind like a creep on tinder. It’s possible that the skinny shaming I was subject to growing up (because we were the ‘Skinny Savva’s’) has me repulsed by a beautifully evolving body.

I’m in the awareness of it.

Listening to it.

Catching it.

Telling it to kindly fuck off.

Because I love myself.

In all of its glory.

And imperfection.

In its flexibility.

And stiffness.

In its fitness.

And weakness.

In its ability to adapt.

And evolve.

And it’s ability to guide me to deeper layers of wisdom.

And to even more self love.

Because it begins with me. My own heart. How can I expect anyone to love me fully, when I don’t love myself. How can I expect to love another fully, when I don’t love myself? Only from this place of full acceptance, love and honour can I give to others so freely ▽