The Ultimate Quest

I want to preface this blog by saying I am no hero. There is no merit of recognition I want to recieve for my words and there is no type of message I want to send here, except one of peace.

This is my white flag. I am throwing my hands in the air, giving up, throwing in  the towel, calling it quits. I surrender. 

I give up the quest to be something I am not, change my body to be what fits other peoples image of beauty, tirelessly starving in the name of dieting only to regress in the name of progress. I give up the skinny-hating, fat loathing attitude. I surrender with no regret, no angst, no frustration. I am at peace. 

The past ten years of my life have been spent in emotional turmoil, in terms of my physical confidence.  Before I was pregnant, I was a size six. I wore belly shirts, and tight pants. I wore bikinis and tight dresses. I ate cheeseburgers and milkshakes religiously. Rum and coke was my multivitamin. I loaded on the dressing, ordered dessert and never thought twice. Everyone told me how "cute" and "little" I was. 

I gained 80 lbs with Noah. I retained a ton of water, ate too many cheez its and marichino cherries and played the The Sims on my days off. I was 19. I was isolated from my "normal" friends, with not much else to do. I never thought about it, never considered how weight would effect me. I never realized putting on weight would impact more than which  size pants I bought at the store.

After I had Noah, people that hadn't seen me in a long time would greet me with " wow, you have post a ton of weight, you look great" and conversations would lead to " you'd be perfect if you just lost twenty more pounds". And weight started to matter. I started to become self concious.  I had grown a life inside me, built a human being. My body didn't bounce back like some women's do. I never went back to that size six, but I spent the past ten years trying. I compared myself to other women constantly, and I thought I would never measure up. I convinced myself my husband didn't really think I was beautiful, he just "had" to say that. I convinced myself that I was a subpar human, not worthy of praise or recognition.

And that sucked. A lot. 

I joined countless gyms. I have been on more diets than I can imagine, without success. I have starved myself, joined gyms, stopped going, started again. And hated myself for not being able to live up to someone's expectation of beautiful. 

It all hit home for me a few weeks ago, and I have been reflecting ever since. 

Rylee told me she should not be eating Oreos because she is always having to buy bigger pants. After explaining to her that she is beautiful, and growing so of course, she would keep increasing in size, I went in my room head down in shame.

I had helped her feel that way. Shame on me. So these past few weeks have been spent finding the beauty in me. And not just physical. I have great skin. It's always clear. Hairdressers tell me how beautiful my hair color is. I am friendly, I am a decent writer ( I like to think),  I value intelligence and love to learn, I am a damn good cook, and damn it I have three beautiful kids and a husband who loves me, unconditionally. 

And according to him, I am beautiful. 

So just like that. I am over trying to be our worlds perception of beauty and for the first time that I can remember, I am comfortable in my own skin, even with my roadmap of stretch marks!

And I feel free!