Sometimes the hardest struggles in life unveil the most beauty and rich truth. This is the case in my life, and especially most recently in the last year.
Like you, I have had my body change over the years. I've seen it change and re-arrange due to hormones, progression of age, medical symptoms or side-effects, exercise exertion, pregnancies, you name it! I've lost hair, gained scars, added weight, blurred vision, limped from aches, swollen from treatments, and the list goes on. Mostly, I've been able to journey through the transitions, accepting the new reflections. Processing as time ticked on. I've been able to gracefully behold the changes in beauty and find renewed self confidence with each crease, crack, and crevasse.
Beauty: is defined in the dictionary as a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.
What happens when you can't see it? What happens when you can't see it in you? What happens when you reject the beauty others see in you?
This podcast episode lightly explores the deep excavation that occurred in me over the last several months, regarding the word "beauty". Because of a steroid treatment, meant to heal my body, I looked in the mirror and only saw a shell of myself. I did not see beauty. I did not see me. I struggled with my body image, my self confidence, my understanding and definition of beauty. I could not receive affirmation, nor see a beautiful spirit struggling in sorrow-which I was, both.
This is the first of many conversations to come regarding women's body confidence, our identity in beauty, the learnings and un-learnings we have over a lifetime-from the perceptions from childhood to the lived experience of adulthood.
This is my story. Only my story. It is truth from my experience, which may not be yours. I am sharing to learn and grow along side you, and to esteem ourselves together.
Social Creative Workshops | Social Creative Conversations Podcast
Amy Vallejo | founder, co-collaborator
wearesocialcreativeworkshops@gmail.com
www.wearesocialcreative.com
@socialcreativeworkshops