Setting goals are a huge part of why we succeed, but they can also be scary. When we don’t meet those goals, they can act as a reminder of failure. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t set the bar a tad lower for myself to guarantee I met my goal, rather than challenging myself and potentially failing. There is one goal that I continually set for myself and never reach. I’ve never written it down or said it out loud, so did I really fail at reaching it? Besides…how do I measure it anyways? This goal cannot be measured or counted in pounds, inches, calories or ounces. My goal this month and essentially forever is to love myself for everything that I am and not hate myself for everything that I am not or will not ever be. I need to learn to love and accept every gray, every wrinkle, every scar and every dimple and every inch and pound of myself. This goal has become increasingly more important to me now that my daughter is 4 ½. I don’t want her to grow up with poor body image like I did. I have NEVER thought I was pretty enough or skinny enough and I picked at every imperfection I had and dwelled on it. It didn’t matter if there were people in my life who would tell me otherwise. I convinced myself that they were just saying that because they had to. She’s my mom so of course she has to tell me that I’m pretty. He’s my husband, he has to tell me he loves me the way I am. They are my girlfriends, they’re never going to tell me I’m fat. It’s a horrible cycle to get yourself stuck in and incredibly difficult to get yourself out of. I grew up watching my mom do it to herself. I remember being young and sitting in her bedroom watching her get ready as she wiggled into her control top panty hose and then press her hand against her tummy to flatten it out while standing in front of the mirror. Then she would let out a sigh and a wish to just be thin again. I’m not saying watching my mom contributed to my own poor body image, but I witnessed her struggle and I know that my daughter is already watching me. She’ll come out of her room in her favorite princess dress accessorized with her plastic ½ inch heels, beads around her neck, tiara on top of her curls and sparkly gloss on her lips and ask me if she looks beautiful now. My response is that she is beautiful all the time and that she doesn’t need all of that “fancy” stuff to be beautiful. She just just smiles and giggles and walks away with her heels clicking against the floor. She’s asked me before why my belly looks “funny” and without thinking I’ve told her it’s from carrying her and her brothers. My belly does look funny…it’s a fucking battlefield. I’ve got (4) 1 inch scars across my lower belly from where they went in laparoscopically to remove scar tissue around my reproductive organs, I have an almost hip to hip scar from where I delivered all my babies via c-section, I have stretch marks up and down my hips and belly from where I grew big healthy babies during each pregnancy and my pooch of skin/fat that just kind of hangs there. These are all things that I’ve hated about myself, but shouldn’t because they are my little battle wounds that lead me to winning my war on my infertility and evidence of the 3 biggest blessings in my life. The next time she asks why momma’s belly looks funny, I will tell her it doesn’t look funny, it just looks different and different is beautiful too. When she is older, I will proudly tell her what each one of those scars mean to me and how I don’t regret a single one of them.
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Jenny VI am a wife and momma to a beautiful baby girl named Penelope and twin boys, Sawyer and Walker. I have diagnosed infertility and am sharing my "dirty" little secret in hopes to help someone else with their struggle. Categories
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January 2016
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