I Am Beautiful
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I was taking a yoga class last week with one of my favorite yoga teachers. She my favorite because she radiates authenticity to me. She radiates love, happiness, and a deep understand that taking life too seriously is for the birds.
As I was lying there, we started class on our backs, she read something powerful to us. She read about accepting those things about ourselves that to us, seem like flaws, as our uniqueness. As I rested on my back and she spoke the words, something resonated deep within me and I had a moment where I got the biggest smile on my face and quietly to myself I said 'yes!'
I am beautiful.
All those things I've picked apart for years, they are what make me who I am. When we embrace them, our truest self can totally shine and illuminate the world.
Later that week as I was reading in my book, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, I came across this very passage. It says:
"Often what we think of as the things "wrong" with us are only our expressions of our own individuality. This is our uniqueness and what is special about us. Nature never repeats itself. Since time began on this planet, there have never been two snowflakes alike or two rain-drops the same. And every daisy is different from every other daisy. Our fingerprints are different, and we are different. We are meant to be different. When we can accept this, then there is no competition and no comparison. To Try to be like another is to shrivel our soul. We have come to this planet to express who we are.
I've spent so many moments in my life picking apart all the things that are different, all the 'flaws' that I thought made me less than.
I use to sit in front of a mirror at the age of 4 and try to scratch off my freckles, already at such a young age trying to rid myself of my so-called imperfections, my so-called differences.
When I hit my teens and my frizzy, curly hair was so different then all my friends perfectly straight long locks, I would rise at the wee hours of the morning to begin a long and tedious task of straightening out my kinks.
These things today make me who I am. They are what sets me apart from everyone else and I've learned to not only embrace them but truly love them.
Lately I've been having a hard time with the fact that I, truth be told, am aging. My perfectly wrinkle free skin is starting to show the wear and tear of the years of basking in the sun without sun screen and abusing my body, pumping it full of bad foods, too much alcohol and the occasional harder substance. Instead of looking in the mirror and noticing how gracefully I am aging, how life has been good to me, I've been focused on the new lines around my eyes.
However, as I was lying in my yoga class listening to my teacher I felt a knot in my throat and tears start to well in my eyes.
I am beautiful...just how I am.
It was a powerful moment for me. For the first time I realized that every single last thing about me is perfect. I don't have to be a certain size, my hair can be what ever texture it naturally is, and the wrinkles around my eyes are a sign of living life and growing wiser.
Sure, I may struggle every now and then in the future with those thoughts but I know I have the power within me to make sure they are only fleeting, passing by and leaving again with the breeze.
I encourage you, my dear ones to look in the mirror and instead of seeing your so-called flaws, see all of the amazing things that make you you. One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Suess:
Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer then you!