Hey Beautiful Dreamers, 

Today I want to talk about a topic that’s been an ongoing learning process for me, and that is embracing my imperfections. Like many woman in particular I have struggled feeling confident about my weight and how I presented myself to the world. For those of you who don’t know I had a drastic weight loss of 60 lbs. After years of battling either being where I was obese, or at some points stick thin I was finally able to find balance.

It wasn’t until really these last 2 years that I’ve felt like I’ve been at a healthy weight for me. I had lost all of this weight yet I still carried all the weight of the damage done to my self esteem over the years. I did not look the same, but inside I still felt like the little girl who was getting made fun of at school. People cannot understand how this kind of battle can effect someone mentally unless they have been through it. You go from one day being called fat/ ugly by a guy you had a crush on to a guy actually looking at you because he thinks you’re cute (not that you have something on your face- although let’s be honest that probably still happens – haha). In a way this made me feel good, because I felt like I was finally being noticed. On the other hand, what it also did was re- enforce my belief that people only cared about what I looked like which caused more damage.

I used to be under the impression that somehow when I got my body to a great size that I would become happy, but I very wrong. Now don’t get me wrong I am extremely happy that I lost the weight and I am very much so a happier person than I was before; however, losing the weight did not magically make all of my insecurities go away. I just found new ones to replace them. Like my lose skin, or the fact that I have cellulite, my hair, or how my nose is shaped. No matter what I would find something. I was always going to find something about me that I didn’t like and that I deemed ‘imperfect.’

One day I had a friend complaining about her weight and saying she would have better luck with guys if she were skinny. She kept going on telling me that she would be happy if she could lose the weight like me. I told her something that day I wish someone had told me long ago and that was “You need to be happy with who you are right now, because who you are right now is good enough. If you really do want to lose weight do it for yourself and not for others approval.”

Isn’t it odd how we can give others great advice, but we can’t tell ourselves the same exact thing? I told her that advice, because I could see the beauty that was within her even with her weight. I could not see that same beauty within myself though. I kept trying to ‘fix’ myself by staying a certain weight, caking myself with a bunch of makeup, and getting blonde highlights that blinded you.

I kept changing myself to find validation through others so even if it was for just a moment I could feel beautiful. It became an unhealthy addiction to where I needed to look ‘perfect’. It got so bad that if no one complimented me I felt like it was because I looked ugly and that I needed to look for a new way to improve. One day a guy approached me telling me I looked exactly like a Barbie doll (the image I always wanted to look like), and hearing those words didn’t make me feel like I thought I would feel. I still felt like I wasn’t enough. That day started to change me in a way. I started to realize that I was never going to live up to my impossible standards.

Since that day I have been trying to make an effort to embrace more of my imperfections. Our ‘so – called’ imperfections are what makes us stand out and unique. If we all erased our imperfections we wouldn’t be us. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at another human being and admired something unique about their features that they could be insecure about. I think many of us are that same way. We can find beauty in others imperfections, but we think that ours make us not enough somehow. We need to stop viewing ourselves with such criticism and view ourselves like a fabulous piece of artwork.

I was talking with a very dear friend of mine today, and she was saying how we had to learn to love ourselves from that outside perspective. That we had to learn to love that little kid that lives within us all. The kid in us just wants to be told that they are enough just as they are. That kid that lives within needs to hear that they don’t have to be what society tells them to be. The kid needs to know that they don’t have to look or act a certain way – that just being who they are is enough and if someone cannot appreciate that then they lost someone incredibly valuable.

Dreamers, I want you to ask yourselves what you tell your inner child. Are you mean to yourself or do you speak to yourself out of love? If you talk to yourself in the first way I want to challenge you (like I’m starting to challenge myself) to talk to yourself in a loving friend way. Tell yourself how valuable you are and how what others may have put you down for is truly what makes you beautiful. Don’t listen to the negative opinions of others. You get to be in charge of how you define your own self. We will never reach ‘perfect’, but we can always be imperfectly perfect in our own special way!

Thank you for reading dreamers,

Amber