Loving my body no matter what

It took a long time to get to this place.

To get to the part of life where I love my body and all she does for me.

Growing up body positivity wasn’t something I knew about. A lot of my family had poor self image and never had anything nice to say about the way they looked. This inadvertently changed the way I viewed myself and also changed my relationship with food.

There are times in my life where drugs kept the weight off to the point of me looking sickly thin.

There are times where a co-dependent eating disorder was shared with a former roommate, where we would get high and then eat until it made us sick.

Then there was the drinking over the years which always seemed to make me sick.

Let’s just say it took me awhile to end those bad habits but I am thankful I did.

It took a lot of hard work and soul searching to end them. It wasn’t easy but boy was it worth it.

So yeah, I haven’t always taken care of my body but there were definitely times over the years where I felt like my body didn’t always take care of me.

When I had my ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in a miscarriage and removal of one of my Fallopian tubes, I had felt my body had betrayed me.

I felt angry. I had worked really hard to finally take care of myself and create healthy habits and I felt like the universe was “getting back” at me for all the years of neglect and harm I had inflicted onto my body over the years.

I was torn. As much as I felt betrayed by my body for experiencing this loss, I also felt thankful to be alive.

And then I found out that I was pregnant with Shelby Jean and it changed the way I looked at myself.

I watched my body grow and change with every day that passed and I was grateful. Grateful that my body was creating a safe place for this baby to grow.

I had never felt more beautiful.

I pushed all the negative thoughts about my appearance out of my mind and focused on the beauty of pregnancy.

I shifted my mindset to what an amazing gift it is to witness my body transform into a temporary home for this little human. Creating the perfect environment for her to thrive.

I would be lying if I said there weren’t some lingering thoughts in the back of my mind that my body would betray me again.

But as soon as those thoughts crossed my mind I would quickly direct them elsewhere. And tried to focus on the positives.

Those nine months with Shelby Jean in my belly may have been the most body positive I have been in my life.

Then I gave birth to Shelby.

A non-medicated birth. My body felt everything.

Afterwards I couldn’t help but be in awe of myself.

My body, my wonderful body, knew exactly what to do and I followed it’s lead.

My mind and body had never felt more in sync, more connected.

I made sure to take pictures of my postpartum body to remember every detail.

As a reminder to be appreciative of my body in all forms.

I look at my postpartum body and I still feel beautiful.

I feel thankful and blessed looking at the body that gave me Shelby.

Too often we get wrapped up in society’s standards of beauty to realize how amazing we are individually. Each of us unique and beautiful in our own ways. Each given this vessel to navigate life with. To navigate the good and the bad in life and everything in between.

I felt like my whole life had been aligning for that very moment when Shelby entered into this world.

She has completely changed my life and changed me as a person and I am so thankful for that.

I am thrilled that I get to set an example for my daughter on what self love looks like and one day tell her the impact she had on helping me love myself on a deeper level.

She is the rainbow after the storm

I am unbelievably blessed.