Be You!

I was doing some reflecting the other day about being a woman in this world. Being in a hotel and watching the television complete with TV commercials (remember those? I barely do–thanks Netflix!) brought me back to my childhood. One that was filled with ideas about what makes a person beautiful and worthy of love. A lot of pain and misguided striving came from that. Though, it must be said, it has all lead me to where I am today, and for that I truly am grateful. I am happy today.

But I was thinking if I ever have a daughter, I would want her to know some things. What could I say to a daughter?

I started writing. I didn’t feel emotional as it was happening, but when I read it to my boyfriend afterward, I started to cry. I realized it was just as much a letter to a future daughter as it was a letter to my younger self.

It’s a letter to the girl that resides within all of us women, the tenderhearted girl that needs to be reassured that she is lovable and worthy..

So to all my girls out there…

Don’t sell yourself short. You are going to meet a lot of people in your life that want to tell you who to be. Sometimes it will be obvious, at other times quite subtle.

They’ll tell you what clothes to wear, how to wear your hair, what car to drive, what cosmetics to use.. Finding yourself bombarded with all this, “they” may start to infiltrate your mind.

You’ll start to think “This is how I should look; this is the way I should talk; this is the path that is expected.” You might look in the mirror and think you can never measure up. Your hair too thin or too thick, your eyes too close together, your chin too round, your butt too big, your laugh too raucous, your intelligence inadequate.

You might step out into the world and compare yourself to women in magazines or on billboards, or maybe even just to the girl next door. You’ll think

“If only I had that hair…”

“If only I had that body…”

“If only…If only…”

So you’ll try. You’ll try so hard to be what “they” tell you to be. Working your ass off both figuratively and literally, a constant nagging in the back of your mind.

You’ll meet people who encourage you to do these things. They’ll pat you on the back and tell you you’re on the right track.

The road to perfection is hazardous and endless, and there’s a million crossroads all leading to different definitions of perfection depending on who you talk to.

And along this road, you’ll get attention for something and feel giddy. The world might tell you you’re beautiful. The world might tell you you’re smart. That’s all well and good until the next person comes along and there you are, forgotten, and left with yourself.

Why? Because all those crossroads lead to the same ultimate destination… To a feeling of inadequacy. When you arrive there, you will be blocked from others. You will be blocked from love, from life, from your spirit.

Inside, you’ll feel like you’re dying.

You’ll try so hard, but it will never be enough. “I’ll never be enough,” you think.

What’s next? You will have tried it all. Exhausted yourself. You’ll be scared half to death because you won’t know what else to do…

Ever since you were a little girl, you will have been told who and how to be. And now I’m going to tell you too.

Be you! There is no one else like you on this planet. No one with your eyes, your smile, your laugh, your spirit.

Stop listening to “them.” Stop listening to their voice inside your head…

Just be you.

You are needed, you are loved.

I love you, just the way you are, a beautiful girl with a beautiful soul.

Be you, be kind, be loving, be true.

Conflict

Conflict is so interesting. I like to think I am the type of person who avoids conflict. This is true to some extent; I am an inherent people pleaser. I want everyone to like me because I am sometimes desperately insecure. Historically, I have looked for the approval of other people, as most of us do.

But there has always been another side to me. The side that says, no, this is what I believe is right and true. When those beliefs are threatened, a different side of me comes out. This side of me is not afraid of conflict. She stands her ground with gusto, speaking exactly what is on her mind.

When it happens, it is almost like an out-of-body experience. It is strange to have such different tendencies within the same person. Strange, but at the same time, very human.

I engaged in a little conflict yesterday as you may have surmised based on this blog post. I am not going to go into the particulars because they don’t particularly matter, but it afforded me an interesting opportunity to look at myself. How can I handle conflict differently?

Was I respectful and considerate?

Did I take time to listen to what was between the words?

Was I too aggressive and outspoken?

To some extent, yes, I could have handled myself a little more decorously. And I always think this self-reflection is a useful tool and serves us well. Next time, I’ll try to do better.

However, I believe what I said was important and a reflection of a truth that I hold dear. It is important to me to be true to myself and what I believe is helpful to others.

I have always had a stubborn and defiant streak. People are often surprised when I tell them this. I come off as pretty mellow, which I am…sometimes. Then people get to know me a little better and witness a few examples of my independent defiance. There is a fire burning inside of me.

In all of us I believe.

I think that fire serves a purpose. I think we are enthusiastic about things for a reason.

I also think other people are too. It is good for me to remember that although I needn’t compromise myself, it is also helpful to look at the other side. Oftentimes the solution to a conflict lies somewhere in the middle.

These days I try to bend more than I have in the past.

These days I also don’t break under the force of another personality. Not everyone is going to like me. I am okay with that fact. I may not particularly like it, but I can accept it.

Different personalities all serve a purpose. Conflict serves a purpose. When we are able to engage in conflict with a constructive attitude, it can often lead us to a middle-of-the-road solution. I do well to remember that no matter how right I believe I am, the other side is equally or more convinced of their own righteousness.

There must be someway to constructively engage in conflict and come out with a solution, without deriding one another or being convinced of our inherent superiority. Conflict is a reality of human nature and I think our inability to deal with it leads to many problems in our society today. Our inability to deal with differing opinions and our want of censoring the other side.

We should look beyond differing opinions into the hearts of one another and see we are all brothers and sisters. While it is okay and oftentimes beneficial to disagree, it does not mean we have to dismiss other people or their opinions. Having an open mind and open heart leads to some pretty incredible friendships.

No, we are not going to be friends with everyone. But we also don’t have to wait to make friends with only people who think exactly like we do. Growth and understanding come from different people coming together and engaging in constructive conflict.

Don’t lie down and be a doormat, but don’t be a steamroller either!

And if you fall into either of those categories, don’t beat yourself up, just try to do better next time…

Ebb and Flow

Good days and bad days endlessly ebb and flow.

Why do the good days go by so quickly and the bad ones seem to drag on forever?

I feel a little silly when that figurative shadow passes and the light in my heart is burning brightly again. It happens every time. Yet somewhere in my mind I still doubt that I am going to feel that light again. But always, I do!

It is a wonderful feeling, and perhaps that is the point of it all. If I didn’t suffer from despair some days, would I be able to experience true joy on others?

Of course, this is not an original concept. It has been around since the beginning of time. So why do we have such a hard time accepting it?

I think many of us want to feel good all the time. Whatever that means.

What is feeling good? The pursuit of pleasure and happiness? There was a time in my life when I equated that with the purpose of my life. Constantly I sought out FUN, happiness, pleasure! I tried it on for size. But it never quite fit the way I thought it would. I think I was constantly trying to convince myself that I felt good.

Nowadays, I am not even sure what feeling good means. Feeling good… What a shallow term. How about feeling full of life and light? That I can relate to. That has depth that means something to me. Feeling good…it’s too elusive. That fleeting moment can come and go in an instant. Not to mention if I am constantly worried about whether or not I’m feeling good, chances are I’m not going to feel good. I’m going to feel worried… And I’m going to be stuck on myself. And I’m going to be stuck in my head, which often is a rather precarious place to be.

So no, I don’t always feel good.

But damn it, I do feel pretty content.

There are days when I doubt myself, my purpose, my place in the world. But those days make the other days burn brighter. My heart leaps with joy at the renewal of my spirit. It is a pretty phenomenal feeling.

Let us remember that no one feels good all the time.

It simply isn’t the human condition.

If you meet someone who says they feel good all the time–they’re lying. Call me a cynic, but I just don’t believe it.

I do believe we have choices. We can choose to look at the glass half full. We can shift our perspective, as I have touched on before. We can connect with others and give thanks for what we have. But to expect ourselves to always have that giddy feel-good sensation is to set us up for a lifetime of disappointment with the world and ourselves.

Ups and downs. Round and around. This is the pattern of life. It all works together to create a mosaic that is who we are and what we experience.

Without sorrow, there is not joy.

Without despair, there is not hope.

Without darkness, there is not light.

Let me remember there is a reason and a season for all things.

So ride that wave–Surf’s up!

Liza’s Struggle

She sat listening to the clock ticking on the wall, wondering why she was putting off the inevitable. It seemed her whole life she suffered from these spells of inertia. Oftentimes they would be followed by great spurts of energy, but it was always difficult to predict the schedule.

It drove her insane some days.

People thought of her as someone other than what she was, or what she felt she was. They looked to her for guidance, for support. She was thought to be confident and bright. She was. Sometimes. But much of the time, she felt like a frightened child who hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do with herself.

It was as if she was given the book of life, read it cover to cover, memorized it, shared it with someone else, figured things out for a period of time, then promptly forgot everything she just learned.

It was starting from ground zero over and over.

How many times would she have to burn it all to the ground?

How many times would she have to be unmade before she became whole?

“The process of growing is incredibly painful,” she thought to herself as she sat in her home staring at the wall as she often did when she was in that frame of mind.

“I really need to get moving,” she thought, still sitting perfectly motionless.

“Eventually…” said another voice in her head. This voice was very soothing. It often spoke to her of the easier road. After years of listening to it, she determined that, to put it frankly, that voice was full of shit.

Suddenly she roused herself out of her reverie, pushing her chair back from the table and standing up rapidly. She ran her fingers through her hair which was frizzy and knotted from a night of restless tossing and turning. “Just keep moving,” said the voice she listened to these days.

She had a big project due for work. Somehow Liza had found herself working at a non-profit. It was something that had always interested her, but seemed completely out of reach. It still seemed completely out of reach some days. Her mind was a hell of a thing to deal with at times. Constantly filled with self-doubt even when the world around her was telling her she was worthy.

Long ago she had realized she could not rely on outer approval to fix her deeply rooted insecurities. Years of seeking meaning in her life had improved this, but it was still something that plagued her often.

Mechanically she turned the knob on the shower to just the right ratio of hot to cold water and stepped into the stream, barely aware of the actions she was taking, completely consumed with the thoughts of what she would have to accomplish in the day ahead.

Of course, her thoughts were often waylaid by various worries and fears that threatened to cause her to careen completely off course, but she kept on the right track as best she could.

“Sometimes that’s all we can do,” she thought to herself absentmindedly. Then realized, she was thinking about what she was thinking about rather than thinking about what she needed to be actually thinking about. What a circus.

After she got out of the shower, she stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. She used to detest her body, see every flaw from every angle. These days she had learned to view it less as an ornament and more as a tool. A vehicle for her soul.

Where could she go today? Whom could she help?

That was on a good day, of which there were many.

This morning the negative side of her mind was gaining influence. As she felt the familiar pang of self-loathing begin to choke her spirit, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, reminding herself of the truth of life.

Reminding herself of her own beauty, her spirit. Reminding herself she would be alright. “One foot in front of the other today, you’ll find your way.” She told herself…

Not Solitary Creatures

We are not made to be solitary creatures. I know this to be true. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to isolate sometimes, but companionship and fellowship are imperative to our existence.

At least, to an enjoyed existence.

Not too long ago in my life, I used to try to convince myself that I just “didn’t like people.” I guess that was mostly true. But to be more accurate, I didn’t like my idea of what people were. My inner “thought-reality” was something much more dismal than the truth.

I hid behind calling myself an introvert. To some extent, I am introverted. I enjoy time spent alone. Often I feel most recharged when I get a chance to go on a solo-trek out in nature. There is no denying this. And I do not submit that we must spend every waking moment with people.

But I had to stop lying to myself. There was a lot more going on there than introversion. It was mostly fear. I simply could not see the whole truth of the world. I was only seeing half of the picture. And it was not the positive half…

Half of the truth is that people are cruel. They hurt one another. They starve one another. There is sickness in every single one of us. We are all capable of malice and dishonesty. We are fallible. People can’t be trusted.

The other half of the truth is that people are kind. They heal one another, they feed one another. There is goodness in every single one of us. We are all capable of compassion and honesty. We are there for one another. People can be trusted.

The whole truth. The truth that I have come to see and believe is that the forces of good are greater. The whole truth is that there is so much good out there. Whatever I focus on will be what I see. So maybe it’s time to stop looking at the negative. It has certainly helped me immensely.

When I finally realized there is no monster lurking beneath my bed, I still felt scared. Like maybe the monster was just invisible or something, I don’t know. My fear can be pretty slow to leave. It just seemed so damn scary to let anybody in. And it can be. But the reward of that risk is beyond what you can imagine. It has been for me. I finally feel I am a part of this world. And on those occasional days when I face some trial or tribulation, my fellowship raises me up with helping hands and compassionate hearts. Things still happen. They are bound to. Life is unpredictable and we can never know what awaits us. But if we keep locking ourselves away, we will be left to face our troubles alone. This is especially true even if we believe in God. For, if we don’t believe in the goodness of people, we will be hard-pressed to have any sort of spiritual connection to God. Because we are all part of the creation of the universe. To deny the goodness in one another is to deny our Creator.

To harden our hearts and block out love and fellowship creates a life that is barely an existence. It is the epitome of loneliness. We can live this lonely way even when we are surrounded by people. Many do this… I did this.

So, if it is in our nature to socialize… what happens to us? Why do some of struggle with this? I think it’s because something bad happens to us, perhaps when we are a child, or maybe later in life. Regardless of when it happens, it causes us to become afraid. This fear leads us to isolate. Isolation leads us to despair. Despair makes our view of the world ever darker. The darker our worldview becomes, the more we isolate, the more we despair. It can go on like this unchecked. But! It doesn’t have to.

Look for the good in others, and you’ll also find it in yourself. Look to build others up, and you will find yourself built up. Look to give love, and you will receive it. Take a chance, open up your heart to those around you and feel your spirit filled with the love of true friendship and connectedness.

Find those people who love you unconditionally and do your best to love them unconditionally back.

Life is short and it is so much better when shared with those we love!

Always remember when choosing your fellowship…

“The people that mind, don’t matter, and the people that matter don’t mind!”

Failure and Success

Am I afraid of failure or success?

Sometimes I am not sure myself. Probably both.

There is definitely fear of failure. Ridicule. Not being good enough.

But there’s also the fear of succeeding. What comes after success? People might have expectations of me… What if I succeed once and then never again? What if I can’t live up to the success?

Better to never try in the first place.

Set the bar low and you never disappoint…

I was like that in high school, an intelligent student who never wanted to give it my all. I was more afraid to succeed than I was afraid to fail. After all, is success really real if there is someone else better? Smarter?

The way I viewed it was this:

If I give 100% and someone else still ends up ahead of me, I have failed. If I give 90% and someone is ahead of me, it’s “only because I didn’t give it my all.”

A fail-safe insurance policy to cushion my fragile ego. In my mind, success had always been about comparison. Therefore, success was impossible.

Maybe that is why I hesitated to try.

No matter how smart one is, there’s always someone smarter. FAIL

No matter how beautiful one is, there’s always someone more beautiful. FAIL

No matter how nice one is, there’s always someone nicer. FAIL

The list went on and on.

Wow, what a depressing and unproductive way to live life, am I right?

And completely unnecessary!!

“Comparison is the death of all joy”

Realizing that fact, I am beginning to grow up bit by bit. (It has only taken me 28 years, I am a bit of a late-bloomer, but as they say, better late than never.)

Success is not about being the best. Success is not about comparison. Success is “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”

So, if my aim and purpose is to try live my life as fully as I can, to love and give and create freely, then no matter what the world tells me, I am a success if I do those things.

Success is in our heart, in being true to what our spirit calls us to do.

Putting our heart into something is a reward in and of itself. Success is something attainable for all of us. It might need to be re-imagined at times. We might consider our definition of success. Perhaps success is simply growth, simply progress.

Perhaps success is effort and willingness.

Failure lies in stagnancy. It carries a familiar comfort but offers no growth.

We fail when we don’t try, not when we do.

The moment we try, we succeed. For, success is an inside job. There is nothing outside of us that can make us successful. We might be deemed a “successful” business person or a “successful” writer, but what does that mean? Because we are deemed a success by the world does not make us feel it inside. Sometimes we strive the most to be outwardly successful because we feel like a failure at heart. There is a struggle to compensate for the inferiority felt within.

But success is not something that can be measured by prowess or possessions or fame.

Success is the willingness to do the best we can and realize that as long as we do that, we have succeeded and will continue to do so.

Stop Waiting…

How much of my life have I spent waiting?

A lot.

I like to think I am a fairly patient person. I don’t get too upset at having to wait in line, or being stuck behind a slow driver. This quality can be helpful much of the time.

It can also be a roadblock.

I have waited…

Waited for my life to begin.

Waited for fear to leave me.

Waited for others to change.

Waited to be okay with my body.

Waited for myself to be perfect so it would be safe to share myself with the world.

Waited for all the wrong things, and none of the right ones.

I have waited where I should have acted and made hasty decisions where I should have waited. Needless to say, it didn’t work out too well for me.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Never doing. And I could wait for the rest of my life and nothing would ever happen. It was like that for a long time, I kept doing the same thing day in and day out, waiting for something to change. I’m not sure where I got the idea that something would just magically change, but I operated under that notion for about a decade.

Years passed, and I did little. Worked, ate, slept, worked out, obsessed and agonized over appearance, drank, got into relationships, got out of relationships, worked, ate, slept, worked out, starved myself, drank, etc. I very rarely read or wrote or did anything that was creative or productive.

Certainly, I never tried anything new. I never challenged myself.

My life was a mere existence. It was flat… And even when I tried to convince myself I was living, I was never satisfied that I was. I never wanted to remain like that… but I also wasn’t ready to do anything to change it. Nope, I was waiting. Forever waiting for my life to begin.

Thank God it did! And at that time, it wasn’t my own doing. God intervened. I started to find my way.

But sometimes the initiative lies with us.

But sometimes I forget that, I fall into the waiting trap. Waiting to do something new because I am afraid of doing it. And God forbid I do something before my fear of that thing goes away. Well guess what? The fear doesn’t go away until I face it, so if I spend my life waiting for the fear to dissipate, I am going to be waiting until I am old and gray. At the end, I’ll still be waiting…

I could be 100 years old waiting for my life to begin.

Thankfully I have realized that sometimes waiting is not the right thing to do.

Oftentimes we must practice prudence and patience. We must wait for the right thought, the right inspiration. But I am the type that can take prudence and patience and warp it into cowardice and procrastination.

So, today, I am done waiting.

I am done waiting for my life to begin.

It’s here, it’s now. All the world around me is filled with life and possibilities. I don’t have to wait until I feel comfortable to go do something, I just have to do it!

What am I waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

Sometimes we must seize the day fearlessly! (Not with an absence of fear, but with less of it, with faith!)

Life. It’s all around us, scary, wonderful, exciting, beautiful! Ready for us to embrace it.

Staying Adventurous!

Today I met Mary. A woman who had recently taken up wood-carving. Not the most thrilling encounter you might be thinking to yourself..

What if I told you the women teaching her were in their 90’s?

What if I told you she herself is in her 80’s?

AND what if I told you she had a badass wooden walking cane that she carved herself?

“Hell yeah!” I thought.

Age is what you make of it. Sure, that is easy for me to say as a healthy 28-year-old. I do not pretend to know first hand the difficulties of old age. I am not speaking from my own personal experience.

However, I am an observer. And I love people (most days). Especially I have always found the elderly fascinating. They have experienced so much more of life than I, seen so many changes. How do people end up with such drastically different attitudes at the end of life?

What gives some the will to live and others a sort of glum resignation to their impending departure from this world?

In part, I say adventure!

The willingness to experience new things. To learn new things. I think it is a valuable attribute for us in our younger years. We are cultivating attitudes now which will likely follow us for the rest of our lives.

It may be easier to feign relative happiness based on material acquisition and physical health as a young person. We might fool the world for a time, perhaps even ourselves. But eventually it will catch up to us. Our faulty dependence on outer circumstances, on the material and physical world.

As we age, our bodies deteriorate, for some of us more quickly than others. So how do we respond? If our happiness has been dependent on our comfort in a physical and material sense, we may go down a rabbit hole of desperately trying to hold onto our youth and vigor. Then as we fight that hopeless battle, despair sets in. In which case, be prepared for a bitter last chapter.

We have all seen those people. The elderly whose light has long ago died out but whose heart mercilessly keeps beating, leaving them to await death.

I do not relish that fate. In fact it makes me rather sad.

But!

We have also seen the elderly who laugh despite their limitations, whose spirits radiate positive energy. Their aging bodies don’t break their spirit. Adventure and purpose still burns in them and gives them life. They are still human and prone to bad days, but they are living!

What do I mean by “adventure”? Perhaps not what one may think.

One definition is “the exploration of unknown territory.”

This does not necessarily entail skydiving or traveling to a remote corner of the earth. No, it is a spirit. The willingness to try something new. Perhaps learning a new card game, perhaps reading a new book, or taking up a new hobby, like whittling (you go Mary!)

For those of us younger people looking to cultivate a spirit of adventure, sometimes we need look no further than our backyard. Oftentimes we miss the adventure right under our nose.

The key to a happy life is in our attitude. Some of my favorite days are when my inner child comes forth and I am filled with awe and wonder at the simple and eternal things in life.

For me, when I am old and gray (or purple if I take after my spunky paternal Grandma) I hope I am, as a dear friend of mine once deemed herself, a “young person stuck in an old lady’s body.”

What to Do When the Sun Doesn’t Shine

There are days where I wake up and the world seems bleak. It just happens. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. I can intellectually know I have so many things to be grateful for, but somehow that gratitude doesn’t seem to make it from my head to my heart.

And then I’ll hear someone say something inane like “It’s never too late to start your day over and have a great day!”

I say bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating languishing in self-pity and despair for days on end, but I think the expectation that we can just arbitrarily change our entire view of the world around by a simple thought is ridiculous. Perhaps those people are more balanced than I am, I don’t know.

In my experience, there are days we simply must get through. I practice prayer and meditation on a regular basis and this helps me immensely. I also practice reaching out to others, growing my community. And being real!

It doesn’t help your day get better if someone asks you how you’re doing and you lie and say “Oh, just great! Life is amazing. There’s so much to be grateful for,” while secretly wanting to slap the silly smiles off of peoples’ faces (let’s face it, it’s only human).

Far better of an answer is “You know what, today is kinda rough. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m not feeling very connected.” Or insert other honest answer.

Honesty is the key to growth and honest and open communication with others is the only way to experience true connectedness. And through true connectedness comes a lot of healing. The reality is we are all very much the same. We may come from different backgrounds, we may be different genders, different races, but at the core of it, we are all human beings. We experience the ups and downs of life. Not one of us is without some struggle, some cross to bear. So let’s talk about it!

A trouble shared is a trouble halved as the saying goes.

Someone has to open up the conversation to transparency with those close to us. It does us no good to pretend, to isolate. In fact, in my experience, it typically gets worse.

Sometimes when I share the troubles that I seem to be having, they seem to lose their imposing quality and shrink in the light of day. The darkness shrivels up when it’s exposed to the light, but when we hide it away inside, it grows and grows.

So.. the next time you’re having a rough day. Try to suck it up and change your attitude. If that doesn’t work, like it often doesn’t for me, stop taking yourself so damn seriously and talk to someone about it. You might be surprised at the effectiveness of it. Sometimes changing your day around doesn’t mean a transformation into sunshine and rainbows, but it might lighten up a thunderstorm into a tolerable drizzle. And there will be many sunny days on the horizon.

Always remember, this too shall pass.

Do you ever feel like you’re in the wrong era?

I decided to start this blog tonight. Trying to start writing more again.

I have to tell you, the game has changed since my last blog when I was about 16. It was on blogspot, I rediscovered it the other day. It still exists, perfectly preserved as if my homecoming dance was currently on my horizon.

Thank God it’s not. Man, did I detest those things. Being a 250-lb 16 year-old was not exactly conducive to enjoyable school functions, especially those that involved getting all gussied up and grinding up on one another.

Today I was thinking.. Oftentimes I have this thought actually.. I was born in the wrong time. This is an era of Facebook and Instagram, and Tweeting.. To be honest with you, I am really only familiar with Facebook (which I am currently boycotting for my own sanity). Anyway, I was supposed to create some hashtags for my first post and I felt like an imposter. “Who are you, Anne? Using hashtags. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

I’ve never quite fit in with the times. It used to drive me crazy. I felt such pressure to conform, to try to be like everyone else. As the years have gone by and I have found a spiritual solution to the malady within myself, I have made peace with my eccentricity. I like what I like. I don’t like what I don’t like.

As Popeye says, I am what I am and that’s all that I am.

This age of social media drains me. It is impossible to keep up with all the trends. And my good God, I am glad I am not a young woman growing up today. I thought I had it hard when I was growing up as far as societal pressures. Yikes! Now more than ever I think it is up to us women of the world to teach the next generation about inner beauty and strength. Outer beauty exists and can be enjoyed, and rightly so. But the measure of a woman’s worth goes much deeper than the outside. And anyone who looks for it outside of themselves will come up empty if they are anything like me.

I started starving myself into beauty when I was 17 and subsequently sacrificed everything that made me Anne. Thankfully I have that lovable loser back now, and I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

You see, the smaller I got, the bigger it grew.

That self-loathing, that feeling of self-hatred. It never once improved with the number on a scale. Or the likes on a page. Or the comments of admirers.

Nope, I still couldn’t stand myself. In fact, I began to like myself less. What a trap we fall into! How we isolate ourselves and limit our potential!

I feel so strongly that as women we need to encourage one another. Remind one another of the great beauty and potential that each of us possess. Let’s rekindle our sisterhood and burn off some of the bullshit!