Can you see your own beauty?

This may probably be one of my most personal blogs yet. 

Please, I implore you to hold off the compliments, I am not writing this for that. You will understand when you read it. It is a normal reaction to want to say “no, that is not true, you are beautiful”. Before you do that read the whole thing and recognize the honesty on what is written. 

I don’t think I am ugly, not by any stretch of the imagination. I think I am normal looking just like most of you. There are those women who are very beautiful and recognize it. There are those women who are very beautiful and don’t or still struggle with self esteem issues. I strive to be a normal looking woman who doesn’t beat herself up or get to down on herself. I have made great strides. I can take a compliment and say thank you for the most part. I can be ok and confident in how I look for the most part. 

I went to lunch once with a friend, she is not a close friend but she is a friend. She is, to me, a very attractive woman. At the end of lunch she wanted to take a selfie of us for a project. We both groaned but got together and took a few photos. She handed me her phone and said “you pick, I can’t stand to look at pictures of me”. I too don’t like looking at pics of me but I picked the best I could. To be honest I mostly looked for the best one of her and made sure I didn’t have a my tongue out or anything ridiculous. I know honestly I am not the most photogenic person. That is just me being honest. 

When I look at myself in the mirror, I generally say “ok, not to bad”. But for some reason when I see pics of myself or even worse videos I get really disheartened. There are times when I want to crawl in bed and never leave. Or quit my job, become a gym rat and join every weight loss program possible. I have to pull myself out of that and recognize how crazy I am being. 

I tell myself “what would you say to your friend if they said that”. I literally look at myself in the mirror and say them. 

Why are we so hard on ourselves? I think women do this more but I don’t think we are the only ones. I think lots of men do as well. Why are constantly comparing ourselves to those who we perceive have it all together? Why do we think others are judging us? And if they are, why do we care so much?

We really can be quite mean to ourselves and to others, all based on looks. I don’t know the answer on how to change this. I know that pretty people, or should I say “people that have good symmetry and come across well in pictures” are pleasing to look at and it makes sense that they are used in commercial ad and such. But why should that make us feel bad about ourselves? Why is there so much ridiculous photo shopping to create the perfect image of a person? 

We say all the right words “everyone is beautiful, beauty comes from the inside out, beauty comes in all forms and sizes”. We all believe that to be true and we want media to promote that. But I am talking from a personal level, how do we believe it about ourselves. 

I know I can stand to lose weight, I know when I am being lazy about my appearance. I want to work on losing some weight and take better care of myself without beating myself up. 

Is this a struggle for you? What are your struggles? Can you be honest with yourself? Can you see your own beauty?

WOKE

“WOKE”

Are you? Am I? 

People use this word to mean enlightened to the plight of......”black people”, “women”, “gay people” etc....

Well America you are not “woke” as long as you allow, encourage, and even joke about the systematic elimination of a whole class or type of people. As long as you glorify and taut as acceptable and even applaud a country who practices genocide to get rid of people with Down syndrome. 

Instead of universal health care

Instead of accessible, affordable, reasonable adoption services

Instead of encouraging businesses to support working parents, especially single parents

Instead of encouraging universities to support students who are parents, esp single parents

Instead of seeing poor children with love and compassion, you see them as a burden

Instead of seeing a person with Down syndrome or any other disability, you see a burden

You look at them sideways and ask the horrific question 

“didn’t you know before you gave birth?’ 

America, supposedly the greatest country, you have nothing to offer women but abortion. You taut as some great choice, a progressive approach to the burden of being a mom. To the burden of children. Instead of honoring and glorifying that which gives life you have convinced many that children are burdens, especially if they are poor or have some disability that you determine isn’t worthy of life. You rip children from the womb and kill. You convince women its no big deal. 

But it is!!

This is not about politics or this party or that. We are all a culprit to where we are now. We are all culpable in the way we treat our children, our poor, our women, our single parents, and our persons with disabilities.

America has never been great to these people and so can’t possibly be great again. 

Imagine if we create a test to determine if a child will be gay and parents started aborted those children would you be ok with that? Imagine we decided that men were the root of evil and began aborting male babies, would you be ok with that? I know you are going to say I am being extreme, but am I really? Where is the line? Where is your line? Where is my line? Who determines that line? The current political party in charge, the previous political party, or any political party? Parents? The parents weren’t allowed to chose in the Alfie case or the Charlie Gard case. The government stepped in, is that what we want? Not me!

Women, persons with disabilities, minorities, single parents, babies and poor children deserve better and demand better. We are better than this. We can be better but its starts now.