The day after....
Yesterday we celebrated my middle daughter and child, 14th Birthday! She is such a beautiful soul. Such grace and love for the world! She can love and share when I don’t think I could. I am amazed by her on the regular. She is so kind and accepting of people. She finds a way or doesn’t even have to of stepping past her own comfort and desire to accommodate others. Such a priceless skill. She wants so badly to be part of the great big world! She has a love of the social life and the spirit to go with it! I love that about her.
I think she however is like so many of us girls! We long for acceptance of all we are. To be beautiful and special and talented! When we don’t feel it or don’t quite fit the prescribed mold we start looking to ourselves to find the problem. To figure out what’s wrong with us. Why we aren’t enough. What should we do or be or have to be BETTER. Why can’t we just be like everyone else? Why can’t we have what she has? Why can’t I look like her in that outfit? What if I do it this way, what will people think? If I don’t do that will I be enough? If I say that because it’s how I feel will it be ok? Should I act like that to be happy? If I only had that I would be happier. I don’t know what will happen if I do or don’t do. So many questions!
I believe that most of these questions and insecurities are started and layered upon us as children. We are born so free and full of life. So light from lack of ego and parental/society layers. We don’t care about all the made up things we decide to subconsciously start caring about, later in life! We are free from the traps of wondering and caring so much to a point of action or non action in life, about what others think of us. We form so many limiting beliefs based off of others behaviors or words. We sell ourselves so short and form judgments about ourselves that we don’t even know we have. We tell ourselves lies in an effort to feel better about not feeling like we are enough. Then we just repeat said story and behavior, over and over again thru out our lives in different situations. We layer up with so much that the real us is so hard to satisfy, only because we don’t know who that is and what we want!
I don’t remember as a pre teen having body image issues. I was very modest however I don’t remember at that point having any real body image insecurities. I remember it really starting when I was 14. When I was 14 my parents got a divorce. My relationship with my mom had always been a stretched strained one and that made it almost non existent. I was very close to my father, however I now realize even that relationship was not as I thought. I was however 14 and in the thick of teenager years! I searching for acceptance in the world. My place. My value. Looking for love and security in places I would never find it. Trying to fit in even though I knew I didn’t want to. Failing because I didn’t know who I was or what any of it meant. I do remember one day coming back from school or somewhere. Some people I knew and was related to were sitting outside the front door having a conversation. I remember overhearing them talking about hips and weight. They were saying that “with hips like that as a teenager and that figure and considering her mother, she better watch it or she will struggle with weight her whole life”. I didn’t know it at the time but that messed me up. I knew the talk was about me however I just thought how shitty it was to talk about someone. I didn’t have any idea what it was doing to my ego on the long term! It was so hurt. It manifested itself into such an insecurity as I got older. It was a big play in how I saw myself for so long. It was a huge foundation to layer on even more. It really probably even started before that, I am just really aware of it at this point though. It came from people that were in positions of power and authority to me at the time. It came from people I felt like I should trust and respect. People that were suppose to show me love & security. If they were saying this, they must know. The fact that it came from those people is exactly why it effected me the way it did. I trusted & internalized what they said to whatever unconscious level.. Then expressed it thru my insecurities.
By the time I was in my 20’s I had spent years beating myself up and limiting myself of experiences due to the image I had of myself. I had created this value for myself that somehow was hinged to my body. That if I could just be thinner or more in shape or prettier that my life would have more quality and meaning. That my experiences would be better if I were. I would hold myself back from being really seen for fear of it not being good enough. I wouldn’t wear the outfit because it didn’t look just so. I would not do the activity because I thought I might look fat doing it. I wouldn’t speak up about things for fear of being seen. I was so influenced by these experiences and then layered up more & more & more by others!
It took me lots of years of self doubt & lesson learning to put together the pieces of how all this had manifested itself in my life. How it had caused other insecurities and doubts. How it had effected me and then how I effected others. The trickle down effect of not feeling like we are enough goes so far! Fear is a thief of great lives! Fear can consume you. Even fear you learned when you were 14. Fear that what size or shape we are has anything to do with our real purpose and value. Fear that we then talk about & express, that then teachers the same fears to our children.
So I guess what I’m getting at in this story is that you never know who is listening or who you might influence. You also never know what opinions or beliefs or judgments you have, might set up the the breading ground for fear in those around you! So if you are a parent, brother, sister, guide, friend, mentor, human….. I urge you to consider this always! Lots of young girls & boys learn to be afraid to really live, based off of our own expressed opinions, beliefs & insecurities. Our own FEARS.
Build them up instead of tearing them down!
#kids #daughters #family #love