If you give me a compliment about my body I will rattle off a hundred flaws. 

I was trying to remember when my hatred for my body started.  The earliest thing I could remember was in seventh grade.  I was sitting with a friend in the lunchroom.  We were talking about bodies.  She said,

"I should call you Nebraska flat lands!"

Because I didn't have much of a chest. 

 I remember feeling a burning fire in my body.  

I felt it to my pimply face to my Olive Oyl feet. 

I eventually grew them.  A chest that is.  And through pregnancy and weight gain and hormones....they were small, then big, then small, then big.  

And guess what? 

I hate them. 

No surprise there. 

   

I helped my co-worker shower my boss yesterday.  My boss is in her 80's.  I look at her body and all I think is that we are all the same on the outside.  We all have the same parts and pieces.  We are just different sizes and different shades. 

My boss is beautiful.  

She thinks she looks disgusting.  

Her body doesn't do much anymore.   But when she was healthy....I wonder if she appreciated her legs. When we went shopping, they walked faster then any of us and her friends had to huff and puff to keep up. 

I wonder if she appreciated her arms.  They held and rocked her grandchildren.  They gave some of the best hugs I have ever had.  

Or her round belly.  Who gave birth to two sons so many years ago. 

She is skin and bones now.  I hug her and I feel her shoulder blades.  Her spine.

  

I think her body is still beautiful. 

I can see beauty in everyone but me.  

Enough.  

I have to start focusing on what my body can do and has done.

  

I have given birth to two beautiful babies.  My stomach is riddled with tiger stripes.  I will always have a pooch.  Would I trade it for a smooth flat stomach that hasn't carried a baby?  Heck no.

  

I may have chicken legs but they carry me through the day.  They hustle when I hear my boss say my name.  They stand in the kitchen and cook dinner for my family.

My arms are shapeless but they give good hugs.  They drive to places I love to go.  They work hard. 

My face is....mine.  Sure I would change stuff about it.  But then it wouldn't be me. 

I stopped weighing myself.  A number in the morning would either make or break my day.  Usually break my day.  

That's insane.  

I'm working on it.  On being comfortable in my own skin.  On finding parts of me as (gulp) beautiful. 

Because it's exhausting to hate yourself.  It takes up to much valuable time.  It's worthless.  I'm vowing to talk nicer to myself.  I will not say things to me that I would never say to anyone else.  

It is going to be a long road.  I still feel like my seventh grade self.   Awkward and weird and very self conscious.

  

I wish I could go back to that day and give her a hug.  I'd tell her....don't worry.   Everything is going to be OK.  Your body will change and grow and do amazing things.  I think you are going to like her.