Let’s talk about this.
For 6.5 years, I’ve avoided every camera whipped out in pole class like it’s the most important part of my workout. Even after I lost 60 pounds and built muscle like a superhero, only a staged group photo or strategic mirror shot made it through the evasive action.
This is the result of decades of heaping hate on my own body for never being perfect. No amount of eating disorders, self-abuse, or compulsive exercise could fix this.
Cut to: Thursday at The Pole Garage just weeks back in class after months of bedrest and most of 2018 spent in a massive mind-body healing journey. I’ve gone deep within to explore the early messages about my worth (starting with, “You were an accident and had abortion been legal in 1969, you’d never have been born”), and what’s important (having been told, “No man will have you if you’re fat”), and how none of that matters (because, “You can’t trust anyone and will end up alone anyway”).
I’ve discovered that loving myself was not only hard for me for the same reason self-love is challenging for everyone but because when I did dare to publicly accept myself even the tiniest bit, I was told I was “too big for my britches” and asked, “Who do you think you are?!?”
Who indeed.
🧘🏽♀️💫🦋
I’ve entered into a new phase of my life — one in which I not only like myself, but freakin’ LOVE myself. I’m on board with what an amazing bunch of brilliant others somehow saw despite my certainty they were wrong (or setting me up for rejection to come): I am fucking spectacular, I am enough, and I am just getting started.
It’s about to get more blissful than ever imagined and I’m not gonna hide any of it, no matter how uncomfortable others are when I refuse to play small.
💪🏽💥💃🏽
If I’m able to do this after decades of self-hate can you imagine what a flood of self-love will make me capable of? Let’s find out!
I’m so glad mama Drea shouted, “Hold it! Let me get my phone!” while Yvonne hit the lights. Before, I would’ve insisted “NO!!!!” or dropped out of the trick or deleted the photo.
F that. This is glorious. I am phenomenal. And this is only the beginning.
❤️💃🏽💫
Who’s with me?
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Please feel free to delete this is it is in any way inappropriate, but I relate to this post because I too was an accident. A product of a rape, actually. I have wished that my birth mother would have ended the pregnancy, but she didn’t and I wound up raised by my bio-grandparents, which was a Godsend. I grew up a minority in a mostly Caucasian midwestern town and felt a bit of pressure to be normal in order to be cool. Thank God I never caved. I’m odd, and I kind of delight in that.
The point is as much as I’ve not wanted to be here, maybe to not be me, I am still here, custom-made by God Himself, for a reason and blessed with the ability to get better (thank God!). Who am I to naysay that?
Shared via DM to a private reply to the photo posted at Instagram:
Thanks much. That does feel nice. 👍🏽❤️🙂
Thank you, Miguel. I’m so glad you’re here. You have important work to do, important stories to tell. Thank you for posting.
I wonder why Mr. Hernandez seems to have cut and pasted my reply under his own name. Am I missing something?
Importantly, though, glad Miguel got some encouragement, too. 👍🏽🙂
In tracking the history, it looks like that’s a spammer tactic. Someone who wants to promote links using my blog comments does a copy/paste of a comment that we previously approved (yours) and then their address gets whitelisted if we don’t catch that it’s an identical comment. Then future comments by the same address (with the spammy links) get through and hopefully sit long enough to create some traffic for the spammer. Stupid and insipid, but I think that’s what was happening with that “Miguel” character. He’s blacklisted now, so it shouldn’t be an issue. Until they use another address, another comment… y’know. It’s just a dumb spammer thing. *eye roll*
Thanks for the explanation. Here’s hoping they find a different, better way to have a living.
Also, I reread your reply to my original comment. I GET more of why this “enough” is so important, not just for you but for so many others, including myself. So much substance there, in that… wow. Thanks!