I think now a days women have a very hard time loving themselves. It seems easy enough doesn’t it? Why shouldn’t you love yourself? you are you after all right ? Well in society today you are made to feel if you are not a size 0 like the models shown on TV then you are not pretty. If you have even an ounce of fat you are not pretty. If you do not look like the girl in the magazine or on tv you are made to feel less pretty. You are made to feel like you need to lose weight. We are spammed constantly every day with weight loss ads for dietary pills, supplements, weight loss programs, work out DVD’s, classes, weight loss bars, its constant and never stops. So what happens ? how does all this make you feel? It makes you feel like crap that’s how. Its hard to love yourself in a society that basically breeds self hate and it took me a really long time to get to the point i am at today; even today i still struggle. 

I remember going through a period in high school when i became anorexic. I was so concerned with how i looked that i decided i was not going to eat. I was on the basketball team, in the Marching Band, I was in numerous different clubs, but i will never forget it was a comment someone made to me about being able to see my stomach through my shirt the one day and it stuck with me. It stuck with me so much that i developed an eating disorder. I love to eat and i started avoiding food. Buying food for lunch and giving it away so that my parents didn’t know, saying i was not feeling well during dinner so that i could get out of eating. It took me getting pregnant to shake the anorexia but that did not mean i was better. Now i was pregnant and self conscience. I was  pregnant and every time i looked at my body i did not like it, i felt disgusted. It took me a long time to look in the mirror and not be disgusted with my body, even after i was pregnant. 

Fast forward to today; I still struggle honestly. Self Love is something i work on every single day. Loving myself, being happy with myself, being happy in my own skin, SHOPPING; OMG SHOPPING is so hard. I HATE SHOPPING because i go into the store and i don’t like anything that i see. I don’t like how clothes look on me, I don’t like how clothes sit on my body. I mean lets be honest real women have curves, real women have stretch marks, real women have some rolls, but even today in my mind I have been so brain washed by society and by people around me that I feel at times unpretty. I feel like i am to heavy, “FAT”, I constantly am weighing myself daily, multiple times a day. Every time i eat i weigh myself, every time i am in the bathroom i weigh myself, every chance i get i weigh myself or i measure my body, it is a constant struggle and something i am constantly working on. I work on this in therapy, i work on this every day i wake up, i work on this every time i look in the mirror. Unfortunately we live in a society where you have to practice loving yourself. You have to practice loving yourself so that it becomes muscle memory. 
Every day i wake up and i look in the mirror and i say, “you are beautiful, you are amazing, you are pretty, you are smart, and today is your day. Today is your day to take on the world” Every day i say that and every day i practice self love. Its not something that comes naturally unfortunately, so it is something i am creating myself and sometimes that is what you need to do. Sometimes you need to create your own self love, your own love for yourself, you can not depend on others to love you enough to compensate for when you are having your low or down moments. 

Every day wake up and say something positive about yourself. Say something to uplift yourself to make you feel like the boss you are. You are special and its important that you make yourself feel that way every day despite what society is made to make you feel. 

August 08, 2020

Written by: Amanda Paige Medina

Do you ever sit and just think about how funny life is? How things just seem to happen out of nowhere but then eventually it all ends up working out and coming together? This has been on my mind for a while but after recent events, it has been on my mind more then ever before. 

    Life has a funny way of bringing the most unlikely of souls together. People who are complete opposites, people who may look at each other and think, nope not in a million years.. Those are the people life brings together. Life brings them together and they have the happiest life together. These are the people that make the best memories, the people who smile the most, laugh the most. But just because someone laughs a lot, doesn’t mean they do not cry a lot, doesn’t mean they do not have there struggles or tough times. Everyone has there own journey and own struggles they go through in life and I think we have gotten so comfortable basing our life struggles off of our neighbors and everyone around us that we forget not everyone’s struggles are the same; and they shouldn’t be. Each person on this planet was put on here for a different purpose, a unique purpose and each of those purposes are significant to that individuals journey and how they go through there individual lives. No two people should have the same journey and the same struggles, which means you should not compare yourself to anyone else. You travel through your life at the speed at which you where meant to travel through out. Everything happens in due time and just because you see someone else who may have something you don’t or who may be a step ahead of you; that doesn’t make that person better then you that just means its not your time yet, and that’s okay. We need to be more accepting of our individual lives now a days and ourselves and whatever stage we are at in this dance we call life. 

   I sit here and i think about recent situations that have occurred in my life. Recent events that caused me to have to make a life decisions i honestly never thought i would make and never thought i would be ready for. But life knows when you need a push, life knows when you need some help moving on or moving along in a particular direction. Recent situations have really taught me that things happen. Things will happen that are outside of your control and you have to be willing to adapt, adapt, regroup, dust off and keep it moving. You can not let one set back or one rough moment carry through day to day and continue to affect you. 

     Even when its hard, you have to try and find the positivity within yourself. You can not expect to look and find positivity in someone else when you can not even find it with in yourself. I am a strong believer that you are one of the main sources that affect your own mood. You are the creator of your own destiny so why not make sure it is as positive as possible? Do not leave your positivity in the hands of anyone else but yourself. 

August 05, 2020

Written by: Amanda Paige Medina