Mindy

A little bit of Mindy and her story –

‘I have battled with self love all my life. I can remember feeling so self conscious of my legs at the young age 6/7 that when I did gymnastics (i was rather good too) I refused to remove my baggy pants. The other older girls would poke fun at me, their younger sisters would join in too. My gymnastic teacher would smack my tummy and tell me to ‘suck it in’.⠀
My grade 6 teacher made us use our weights for a maths problem, when I refused to tell the class how much I weighed, she got angry and said “if you were recieving your weight in jellybeans, im sure you’d tell us”.⠀
I remember some relatives talking to my Mum about my weight when they thought I couldn’t hear. ⠀
Of course puberty hit and thats when things got pretty bad. Of course I never really spoke to anyone about it. I just ate my feelings, which of course made me gain more weight and the self loathing continued. ⠀
High school sucked. We’ll just leave it at that ? ⠀
It has taken me until now to be relatively confident in myself and even now I have my moments & my days.⠀
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Although there were those people that made me retreat into my self, there were people that stood up and said small things that remember clearly. To the Kevin, who I sat next to in that 6th grade, Thank you. You probably dont remember the nice things you said to me but I do. To Zeb, who is the son of my now baby Doctor, Thank you. When girls in high school said nasty things about my hips and you stepped in saying I had wonderful baby bearing hips and they will be a huge asset when I have children. You were right. ? ⠀
Self love is a huge journey. Not everyday is sunshine and rainbows but eventually the bad days become fewer and you learn to embrace those days rather than dwell on them. People will still say things that get you down but you are not those comments. You do not have to look at yourself through their eyes. Your stomach, your thighs, your wobbly arms do not define your worth. ⠀
Teach you boys to be like Kevin and Zeb. I know I will do my best to raise my boys to lift women up and embrace them rather than stand by and watch people bring them down.’