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.
Continue reading “Learning to Love Myself and Trusting I am Enough”
All my life I have been the typical ‘no fuss’ woman who ‘put my face on in 5 minutes’! Then all this changed, I felt that standing up to do my morning beauty routine just wasn’t cutting it anymore, so I decided to pull up a chair, a simple act that led to a miracle!
Unusual beauty tip you might say, but for me it has made a huge difference in how I feel about myself throughout the day.
Continue reading “Beauty Tip for Women: Ladies, Pull up a Chair!”
Recently I was looking online at ‘vintage pictures’ for inspiration of images that I could put up in my room. What I discovered littered between sepia images of flowers, old keys, and the Eiffel tower, was quite revealing: I found articles/advertisements, similar to the one below, for women who have poor body image, advocating weight gain by saying: “Don’t think you’re “born” to be skinny and friendless”…. “If you want to look better by adding desired pounds and inches of welcome weight… try WATE-ON”, and “Men wouldn’t look at me when I was skinny”. In a nutshell these body images show skinny as the undesired body shape and the one to get rid of. Continue reading “Body Image: Vintage pictures vs Modern ideals”
The weekend before last, I was feeling great in myself, no feeling of self-loathing in sight and whilst tidying my room I decided to go through the clothes in my closet. I was in the mood for a deep clear out, and it was definitely needed!
Around two and a half years ago I put on a substantial amount of weight (around 10kg) and within a number of months another 5kg got added more gradually. This was a consequence of not wanting to move forward in my life, and instead digging my heels in. As a result a lot of my clothes, especially jeans and dresses, didn’t fit me any more. My body image hit rock bottom, and my self-loathing skyrocketed. Continue reading “Self-loathing, My Closet, and Me”
Continue reading “Raising our Girls – Supporting True Beauty”
Image is huge in our society, with a constant bombardment of what you should look like from all sides in media and social media. Thankfully, as a society we are starting to become more aware of how the images we see everyday affect us and especially influence our younger generation.
Recent studies show that the impact of early exposure of sexuality to a girl’s development is indeed very harmful. A report by the American Psychological Association task force (APA, 2007), found that girls who are exposed to sexual messages from popular culture are more likely to have depression, low self esteem and to suffer from eating disorders. Unfortunately, we are only currently seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the devastating effects of over sexualizing our young girls, especially with the advent of social media. Continue reading “The Effects of Image in Media – Not so Sexy for Young Women”
Really loving my body shape and how I feel versus how I look is a recent new awareness for me. Lately I’ve been feeling so great and really enjoying feeling how my body feels whenever I walk or move, so much so it often makes me smile to myself, even in public!
Going back 10 years, my focus was never on how I felt but always on how I looked. Sure I would eat when hungry, or sleep when tired. Actually as I write that, I realise I didn’t eat when hungry –
Continue reading “Body Shape – How I Feel versus How I Look”
Why does it feel like we have to attain beauty and we are not beautiful until it has been gained or purchased?
Why isn’t anyone telling us that we are already truly beautiful and amazing?
Why are we not supported to seek forms of expression that confirm our beauty?
I have started to observe a pattern of how we have been side tracked to express our beauty via the misrepresentations of outside influences. Magazines, music, pop stars, movie characters and story lines, movie stars and self-help programmes all influence and suggest how to dress, wear make-up, what to say, how to say it, our attitudes – even our postures and gestural movements. Continue reading “The Natural Yearning and Impulse to Express our Beauty”
This week, I became my own image consultant and stylist and cleaned out my wardrobe, completely re-defining myself and my worth as a woman in the process.
It all started a little while ago when I went for an esoteric healing ‘bodywork’ session and named a certain way I’d been living that wasn’t very supportive or self-loving. As a result, and in the days following this session I could feel just how I held myself and my body in a certain way, and dressing in order to mask, hide or stop feeling the distinct lack of worth I felt as a woman. Continue reading “Image Consultant & Stylist – Re-Defining Myself As A Woman”
I didn’t even know such a thing as intermittent catheterisation existed until I recently had some health issues and ended up in hospital, due to not listening to my body when I had a pain in my back.
The pain increased over a week and the inflammation by then had caused enough nerve damage to stop my bladder from working as well as affecting my left leg.The reason I feel to share, is because catheterisation is not a subject many people talk about and I was unaware of it up until my own experience of intermittent catheterisation – and so too, if it comes to that, a certain intimacy with the anatomy of my vagina. Continue reading “Intermittent Catheterisation – The unlikely link between the anatomy of my vagina and starting to love my body”
