I am a beautiful woman!
Wow – that’s a bold statement to make about myself but make it I will. Let me explain.
When I say I am beautiful I don’t mean in the way society dictates. I don’t have a perfect figure, whatever that is, and I’m not a model.
I’m beautiful in the way I love myself.
It doesn’t come from the outside at all or how we are told or think beauty should be or look like. Instead it comes from a feeling within of knowing who I am – and the qualities that make up my being and trusting that those qualities are all I need to bring. When I feel beautiful I feel strong and graceful. There is a flow to the way I move and hold myself. And there’s a sexiness in that – that no one else can feel except me. I’m extremely delicate in every way from my frame right down to the way I touch something. I love the tenderness and grace that I bring that allows others the space to be who they are with an absolute understanding, clarity and respect for their choices.
The more I experience and build that love for myself by trusting and accepting these feelings then the more I make my own choices from a place of knowing and understanding who I am and what is right for me, rather than just doing what I think someone else expects of me, or has told me to do, the more that beauty deepens within and emanates out.
I never thought in a million years that I would ever feel like a beautiful WOMAN – or even a WOMAN. The qualities that I can now see so clearly were there but I just didn’t trust that they were enough – because I didn’t feel I was enough.
So I played the girl, you know, the dizzy girl that got a joke by acting irresponsibly – playing dumb. The girl who sacrificed herself so other people could feel better about themselves by going along with the crowd just to fit in when every cell of my being told me not to. I would constantly put myself in dangerous situations all the time with no regard for my health or safety just to be part of a group or feel like I belonged.
In my relationships I never showed anyone who I truly was, particularly men. I realised at quite an early age that other people felt very uncomfortable around me so I played myself down and I would hold back the very essence of who I am just to make someone else feel better. That’s crazy isn’t it – crazy, sad and so debilitating for me.
During this process I slowly destroyed my own self worth and value for myself until those feelings of low self-worth became normal and I didn’t feel anything anymore except the negative feelings: I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t pretty enough, and I wasn’t clever enough. These feelings became so strong that they then ruled my life and I became those feelings. It was truly debilitating in every way and I knew it. I felt trapped in a way of life that I knew wasn’t me. It was like being in my own personal prison.
When I look back now, as I write this, the behaviors and feelings I had for myself seem more abusive than the excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol I used to take to stop myself feeling how low I had become.
I was so desperate to fit in somewhere in life, I started to believe that I wasn’t good enough and I began to settle for what was offered to me. The abusive relationships were OK, because even if it wasn’t what I truly wanted, it was something. It was a crumb that I could then take to the world and say ‘Look I must be OK because someone is offering me this.’ The job I never wanted to do or liked became a job that I deserved because I felt I wasn’t good enough to get another job. Even the way I was with friends reflected my own lack of self worth: I would always put my friends above me and I never gave myself credit, but constantly put myself down in front of others by making jokes about how useless I was and that I was only good for a party etc.
I allowed people to treat me in a way that was disrespectful and downright hurtful at times, but deeper than that, I allowed myself to give up on who I truly was.
When I was very young and growing up I always had this sense that life for me was all about me and concentrating on the choices I needed to make to get me back to the power and strength of the beautiful woman inside. For a while I lost that commitment, but then in my early 30s I started to reignite those feelings. This was after an excessive period of drug and alcohol abuse, a series of failed relationships, and a deep sense of there had to be more – there had to be more to me. So I reawakened that commitment to ponder life more deeply – looking at myself and how I was, rather than blaming the people around me, to find some of the answers I was looking for.
When I came across Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I also met his daughter Natalie. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever met. And I don’t mean outwardly, although she is that too, but what I’m talking about is the beauty she holds for herself and others. Words alone cannot express how graceful, sexy, sassy and wise she is – it’s something you feel when you meet her and it inspired something deep within me.
Natalie showed me that women can be complete on their own. That how you are is a choice and that it was possible to feel absolute love for yourself.
That was the point I realised that I never had truly loved myself – I was always searching for something I thought I had to be – but Natalie showed me I was already enough and that the qualities I brought to the world were everything I needed to bring, and more.
She has been a true inspiration to the way I feel today and how I love and take care of myself.
Now, my own beauty emanates out with a smile, or the way I walk or how I touch something. And I can feel that love inside myself grow each day as I trust that beauty and know that I’m enough – just the way I am.
By Fiona Shuttleworth, Brighton, UK
You may also enjoy:
Single by Choice – Does it Really Exist? by Natalie Benhayon
My Relationship with Me, Love and Tenderness
How we Start Relationships by Lee Green