Sorry, I didn't intend for this to be so long.

I'm new here but I'm about to embark on a very scary mini-adventure: the water park. I made a promise to my son to take him to the water park here in our town before school starts. I didn't procrastinate because he actually has been in day camp all summer long and I have a new baby, so we couldn't go on the weekends. I am taking him on Monday or Tuesday (depending on schedule) and I am going to buy a swimsuit so that I can play with him. I know he does not give a damn about what I look like, he loves me dearly and is so excited for us to go. It is going to be just he and I and I'm excited, too. I am also anxious, self conscious, scared, embarrassed, etc etc. Of course, I wouldn't go to places like this unless I was at gunpoint, but this is my little boy (my first, my baby) and I don't make promises very often. So we are going. But I am making a step toward positive mental health, here. I am not going to wear a cover up, I'm not going to walk around with a towel, not going to wear a shirt. It will be me, a bathing suit and a ton of 100+ neutrogena sunblock (I'm a redhead.) Imagine this is you and you KNOW how I will be feeling.

This is for me. This is for my son. This is for my new baby girl. I want to have fun. I will have fun. I will not be the only nervous, overweight person there, I will focus only on the two of us and everyone else can go to hell. I'm not a spectacle. It's only in my head that people are staring and judging me. They are too busy having fun with their family or feeling just as self conscious as I am. At this moment, I am 75% sure I will get over it pretty quickly, but oh my gosh, it feels like one of the most important (nerve-wracking) steps to health.

I want to be brave. I refuse to have my daughter grow up seeing and hearing me degrade myself (myself!) in the mirror. To see and hear me judge myself, berate myself, hate myself, disgust myself. Because this is my reality :frown: and I am so freaking sick of it :devil: . I am worth so much more. She is. We all are.

Tonight when I get home from the gym, when I get out of the shower, I will stand in front of the mirror and look, really look, at my beautiful, lovely, wonderful body and say something positive about it. I want others to do this, too. I want to know that we can, for one second love ourselves NOW. At this point, when we are telling ourselves that we are beautiful, that we deserve to love our own bodies, we will have won something; however small, we have taken something back that belongs to us. Please, please support me, yourself, women and girls all over and join me tonight in front of the mirror for one second :flowerforyou:

Thanks.