I have my own reality show. At least it feels that way when I look on the internet.
I have promo shots all over the place…Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest. I have videos on Youtube and Facebook. If it was fifty years ago and I had this many pictures and films in the media I would obviously be a movie star.
This reality show comes chock full with all my opinions, all the things that I think make me valuable, all the things that make me laugh, and all the things that make me cry. Where I go, what I believe, who I love, is all plastered everywhere for the world to see. People who don’t know me personally often size up who I am with those images. This would make me seem super famous to an alien who landed on earth and studied only me, but the truth is, my reality show is not all that special since there are so many reality shows out there. In 2005, only 6% of the US was on at least one social media platform. As of 2019, that statistic drastically rose to 90%.
Because everyone’s images are everywhere all the time, I often compare myself to other people’s reality shows. All those beautiful spouses! All those beautiful children! Until this year, I had neither of those things. So I often tried to paint my reality show stellar enough with my trips to different countries and the music and writing that I create that you might even be a tad bit jealous. That way, I can feel better after my comparison hangover.
I am a little bit ashamed to admit that now that I have an awesome super handsome husband and our magical wedding (after ten years without one picture of me on the arm of a man) I feel like my someone-else-will-think-I-have-my-life-together meter has gone up drastically.
But there is one part of my reality show that is secretly really difficult for me. I don’t like most of the images of the main character in my reality show.
This is a major problem because I am expected to have so many images. (One of the reasons that it is semi painful for me to engage with Instagram is that you have to post a picture like, every freaking time.) As someone who creates things that I want to get into the world, it is almost a rite of passage to put my images into the world as much as humanly possible. In fact, it is almost impossible to get a publisher to publish the book I have worked so very hard on for 5 years without a social media following.
I love writing. I don’t love videos and pictures of me. It’s a difficult predicament.
This has been even more difficult for me in the last five years or so. Because of a miraculous medication that let me sleep after four traumatic years of chronic insomnia from Lyme disease, I have gained quite a bit of weight as a side effect. Insomnia was the most traumatizing thing I have ever been through in my life, and yet, I have at times pondered if I should go back to that torturous life by getting off my medication so that the weight could come off. I always come to my senses and tell myself that the sleep is more important than the slim.
So I struggle through the extra weight and try not to let my hate myself or my body. But when I look at pictures of myself, it’s hard to overcome those thoughts.
I don’t think I am alone in this struggle. An article I read said that women experience an average of 13 negative thoughts about their body each day, and 97% of women admit to having at least one “I hate my body” thought each day.
Also, heaven forbid! I am getting older. I am starting to really look different than the profile picture that was taken twelve years ago. I only recently changed it to a wedding picture that is pretty off in the distance. It has been hard for me to post current profile pictures or pictures of my life with my new family because I have been afraid of what people might think if they see the extra pounds of weight and the new wisdom lines.
As they say, time marches on. All over your face.
The truth is, If I was on the outside of myself, it seems as though I would like me more. If I was friends with the actually pretty amazing woman that is Kate, I might notice her weight gain and her getting older. But only for a moment. Mostly I would think of her as a kind, creative, passionate person who loves the people in her life well and tries to bring beauty to the world whenever she can.
And I would think she is beautiful.
Unfortunately, I am on the inside of myself, and for some mysterious reason, that can change everything. I have a bad case of inside-itis. That strange disease that makes me feel like everyone in the world is worthy of love and belonging…except me. That ailment that makes me a really good friend to other people, granting all kinds of compassion and grace to the people on the outside, but seldom turning that kindness on myself. That illness that makes me think that everything in nature is lovely, that people are gorgeous and colorful and amazing even if they aren’t traditionally “beautiful,”…except me.
Something shifted me out of my inside-its disease the other day when I suddenly wondered whether mirror and miracle came from the same root word. I looked it up. They do. They both come from a root word meaning "to wonder at."
This made me think. I have not seen my body as a wonder lately. But the truth is, it is a wonder. It is an incredibly complex miracle that keeps me breathing and hiking and thinking and communicating and creating. It allows me to live this one wild and wondrous life.
It is time to be grateful for my body. It is time to see myself as beautiful. Even in a body that has morphed and changed over the years. We are so much more than our faces and our bodies. Those wrinkles that you wince at when you look in the mirror tell a hundred stories of the pain you endured, the mountains you climbed, the people you held, the mundane moments you learned from, and the thousand times you came out on the other side stronger. Those smile lines came from laughing with children. Those wrinkles were etched in your eyes as you watched your story unfold before you. Those marks are not ugly. They are gilded with gold.
Even those extra pounds of weight can tell a story of a life that is not full of the worry of when the next meal will come from. Can we be grateful that we have enough to eat instead of bitter that our body is not the way we want it to look?
Culture has told us the lie that our young face or our perfect body or our beautiful skin is what makes us beautiful. That is not the truth. The unrelenting strength that it took to walk every difficult step to become who you are right now, even as you read these words, is what makes you beautiful.
There is something more important than the way you look: it is the story that you have lived through, the legacy that you earned every time you kept taking the next step and the step.
Your beauty is not running and out and running out and running out. It is filling up and filling up and filling up.
Your life is not running out and running out and running out. It is filling up and filling up and filling up.
Remember this, always. You are not a mistake, You are miracle.
Stop for a moment and think about this. When you ponder yourself and your value, do you attach it to things like how much you weigh or the clothes that you wear or your youth? I don’t shame you if you do…it is obvious from this post that I do it too. It is ingrained in our culture to place value on those things. But maybe we can become counterculture by valuing instead the love that has written our days, the mercy that has been in every line, the beauty that is found on every page.
I have grown weary of this watching my own reality show and not liking the main character scenario. Perhaps it is time for us to start a revolution. A revolution that starts when we believe that our unsurrendering spirit is what always has and always will make us ravishing.
A journey that starts when we realize that what we see in the mirror truly is a miracle. #bodypositivity #bodypositive #embraceyourself #embrace #miracle