Source: confident-beautiful-motivated.tumblr.com via Gretchen on Pinterest
i've turned a corner.
i don't know exactly when it happened. i don't know what triggered it. i don't know when all of it hit me, full on. maybe it was boxing. taking myself to my absolute limit physically every day definitely changed me from the inside out. maybe it was the clean program. so many days of deliberately eating unprocessed, healthy, organic food -- no caffeine, no salt, no sugar, no junk food, no corn, no peanuts, no dairy, no nightshade vegetables, no wheat gluten, no pork or beef or seafood -- for weeks on end. it must have shaken something loose in my soul. or maybe its all the vintage tea dances and parties and cool events and such -- glowy moments that transport me into another time and place, whether i want to go or not.
as if all of that weren't enough, i have an avalanche of unconditional love in my life that overwhelms the most mundane moments in my day to day world -- and he's right by my side.
apparently while i was beating myself up about not being able to do a military push up, my life pulled me up to this whole other level. something clicked when i read the quote above. like gabby, i made the decision to get off the couch and get physical. i made up my mind to eat healthy. i wanted to have more fun on my own terms. sure -- getting dressed up in vintage clothes and going to a tea social and dancing to music from the 20s and 30s isn't everyone's idea of a good time but it makes me very, very happy. so, nuts to you.
maybe that's the whole point: nuts to you.
it's a beautiful thing, to subconsciously focus only on the things that really matter until everything else grows strangely blurred -- and i'm left wondering why i cared about any of that stuff in the first place.
and that's another thing: there is something powerful and life-affirming to be said for gabourey sidibe having the guts to make that statement to herself, to decide that she is beautiful, when practically everything in the world is telling her -- and every other black woman on the planet -- that she is not. there's a reason why, in a recent allure magazine survey, black women were three times as likely to rate themselves as "hot" than their caucasian counterparts. that makes perfect sense to me.
i don't have anything out there in the world that's validating what i see when i look in the mirror, so i make my own world. i have my own beauty standards and regimens, my own beauty ideals. my own beauty icons. and as i surround myself with these things and more, my self-confidence grows and grows and grows.
did chris rock say it best? why yes, he did.
i know how -- i decided! -- but i don't know when i got to this stronger, healthier, happier, more beautiful place in my life. all i know is that i'm pressing on, the upward way. and i'm grateful.
