Saturday, 2 November 2013

Overcoming my image issues

November already! 11 months into the Year and it feels like it just began for me some days and other days I feel like it has been a long year.
As I reflect back over 2013 it has been a year of a lot of endings and beginnings. Revelations and eye opening experiences where I have had to make some major decisions to protect myself, my family and my dignity. To be a role model to myself and to my family as well as to others to help us to see how possible it is to make decisions whether they turn out good or bad but to just keep going even when life does not give us the sweet lemons to make the juiciest lemonade.
To know that sometimes the lemons will be bitter in order for us to learn to turn that bitter into something sweet.
My own lesson for this morning as I woke up with the call of nature ringing in my ears. Willing me to come outside. But all I could think about was my weight and how I am embarrassed to put on exercise clothes and walk the streets. Ego stamping out the light side of my being. Shame. Humiliation and fear taking over the possibility that existed for me in a morning walk.
So I sit here this morning flummoxed about why I can’t motivate myself to exercise as I see the layers appearing on my body in places I never knew layers could be. I had put on my exercise clothes to go out into the fresh air but I just could not build up the nerve to do it. All I could think about was how horrible I look in exercise clothes. Beating myself up rather than accepting myself for who I am.
Weight is a reflection of where we are in our lives and as women who are ageing we have to accept that unless we completely deprive ourselves of food that tastes good, we will not have the figure of the girls we were in our twenties.
Writing this is allowing me to change my message. To adjust my thinking to when I look in the mirror to appreciate that  I am seeing a mature woman looking back at me. A woman who has lived, loved and grown. And continues to do so.
Each layer a reflection of the miles around the track of life I have walked, run, avoided.
Reminding myself about the bitter lemons and that it is up to me to turn them into sweet lemonade and to stop wallowing in the fact that they are not as sweet as I would like them to be.
Life need not be about obsessing as we do about our physical state unless it is a serious impediment to our health and well-being. Instead life is about exercising our mind and spirits to make sure the person we are taking out into the world is one filled with love and light. One that can counter the negative energy that surrounds us - always trying to pull us down into the darkness. As is this obsession of mine about weight making me want to hide from the world rather than being out in nature smelling the fresh air and looking at the trees.
Tomorrow morning I am telling myself will be my day when I take myself out into the morning air and let the beauty of nature embrace me regardless of what I look like just as long as I am full of gratitude for being me. Accepting I am where I am meant to be, look as I am meant to look at this time in my life and who I am meant to be.

Turning those bitter lemons into sweet lemonade is totally up to me and me alone. Namaste

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