I was watching something a friend had posted about her journey to health and something she said hit me pretty hard, this isn't verbatim but you'll get the idea, "I can't wait to see what life I will be able to live with all this weight I am losing and the new body I will have"...

I see this with renewed eyes, with educated eyes, with eyes that understand that message and now want to shout to everyone trying to convey it that it is.not.true!

Why couldn't she live a life she wanted in the body she had before her diet? Well she could, only she didn't believe she could, because society tells us we can't do things based on what we look like, and everywhere we turn we see a solution on how to be more like the standard of beauty and health portrayed by the media so we can find "happiness". This isn't special to her, dare I say, this is more than norm than the exception.

I don't want to stand on a soapbox, but you CAN live a full and happy life with ANY... body. It's true. You can! And if you dig to find them, there are people out there proving it!

Don't waste your time being depressed and worried about what other people's opinions are about what you look like.  Don't be so consumed with the idea of what they might think that you try and change who you are because of it.

I understand hating yourself... I understand because you don't fit the mold, that you feel ugly and unlovable...but it isn't true! If you start working on what's broken on the inside that continues to feed those ideas you can ACTUALLY find peace within yourself.

The more you connect and accept truly and wholly with who you are, the more you will find joy in it. That doesn't mean you don't progress, that doesn't mean you don't continue to strive to be better in all that you do, that doesn't mean you stop learning... it just means you stay on a path that feels authentic to you, and only you, whatever that may be. I have been to many funerals and not ONE that I have attended said, "The best thing about Jane Doe is that she was skinny/beautiful" in fact, their appearance hasn't been brought up... no, because the outward appearance doesn't leave a legacy -  your actions, the way you treat people, what kind of character you developed, who you were in a relationship - that matters, that's your legacy and what makes YOU, you.

"Be an original so you don't die a copy..."