An ode to thick thighs and squishy stomachs

While we are all here to better ourselves, I read this and thought I would share, regardless of what shape you are in now, you are still beautiful and alive! -


I’m squishier.

My thighs are thicker, my stomach rounder, my sides softer. My dresses are a little tighter, harder to squeeze into. I don’t wear pants much but it’s hard to find a pair that fits. I wake up and find that if I smile too hard at the wrong angle at my mirror image, my chin doubles.

When I contemplate the extra thickness in my thighs, I see clearly that I have a choice.

A choice to treat it as something foreign, as something that, even though on a part of me, isn’t a part of me.

Or a choice to see it as what it is, what it truly is.

I take my thighs into my hands and I feel them.

I feel how full of aliveness they are, constantly sparking with energy, with the evidence of life, the affirmation that I am here, I am here.

I feel how a part of me they are.

I feel how, though their size does not define me, their very existence shows how blessed I am: to have working legs, to have legs at all, to have the luxury of being nourished enough to fill my skin with flesh.

My stomach has creases from the fat rolls that will probably never go away. No matter what size I am, my stomach will probably be flabby, the skin loose and hanging, because of all the extreme size fluctuations I’ve gone through as a recovered disordered eater. No matter how small I may get, my stomach will probably still balloon when I eat too much salt, or eat a lot, period.

And it’s beautiful, the softness. It’s beautiful, the way it curves out and the way I look super-pregnant when I eat a lot. It’s beautiful, the way my digestive system, after so many years, reminds me again and again that it is reliable, that it will never fail me– no matter how many times I’ve failed it.

My skin, another survivor of my eating disorder, will probably always be loose, stretchmarked, scarred, and adorned with cellulite. Yet, it’s soft. It’s a survivor, not a casualty.

Contemplating my roundness, my softness, my warmth, I smile. I smile at my naked body, sometimes the skin between my legs sticks together because there’s no room, no space. I smile and I remember, I’m always remembering.

I remember that don’t need to believe the lies. The lie that because I look the way I do– that I look like myself, a real, live, warm human being– that I need to be ashamed.

I smile and I touch my skin.

I am alive. I am here.

And I will be bold, even though I see no reason that this should be bold. What I see is that this should be what’s normal– truly appreciating our bodies, inhabiting our bodies, and loving our bodies– no matter what they look like.

I will scream it in the streets if I have to.

I love my body.

No matter what it feels like.

No matter what it looks like.

Unconditionally.


Taken from http://www.rootsofshe.com/an-ode-to-thick-thighs-and-squishy-stomachs/