Imagine you are a piece of glass and people are bullets, their words and actions considered the gun. Independently, both cause no harm. Together they are deadly.  If their harshness touches you, the reality is they can shattered all you work to build if your not careful.

Ok let’s be really honest; thick girls are winning in this society. Team thick!! Now let me say this before the bashers come for me. I know I’m not fat….I am not claiming to be, BUT I am considered thick and I am ok with that. Bodies come in different shapes and sizes and whether you are slim, slim thick, average, thick, BBW, you should still love the body you’re in because the packaging doesn’t determine the contents of the individual. Yet I’m finding the packaging does “influence” the perception of self or at least it did for me.

Ok disclaimer complete. Now to the real shit.

I recently decided I might need to take my health a little more seriously.  Apparently French fries don’t count as a vegetable. No but seriously, after some self-evaluation I had to take a plunge and really dedicate time to really assessing my health, immune health, mental health etc.

This journey I’m on isn’t just to heal my heart, it’s to understand who I am, and who I want to be. My main point is to design and define my existence, before someone does it for me. At the happiest, I was at my fittest. I ate a vegetable based diet with very little animal bi-products aka didn’t eat much meat/poultry fish etc (Flexitarian/semi-vegetarian). I drank tons of smoothies and I juiced, I ran daily, worked out daily whether I did Zumba, bootcamps, weight trained, kickboxing/ boxing classes etc. I lived happily this way for years.

A few years ago I fell into a relationship where my partner was judgmental of my lifestyle choices, activities, claiming my body was too muscular and I ate like a bird. Now, obviously I shouldn’t have stayed with this individual, yet I did for whatever reasons. My self worth was dependent on my partners’ view of me. I was a people pleaser. Back in those days my mental was not strong enough to handle the harsh words and I found myself altering my eating habits and workout habits to accommodate for my partner.

Soon enough I found myself unhappy with my love life, my body, my eating habits, and I was getting sick often. That and a move to a new state really did a number on my mental health and physical health. I was drained and all the sharp, raw broken pieces of my life lay before me and I had no idea how to begin to reconstruct the pieces, so I did nothing about it. I gained weight rapidly and my self-confidence was at an all time low.

Is their any relationship between how you feel about yourself and how you view the world? Absolutely! When you feel better, you do better. Let’s be real! When you know you’re “on fleek” people need to make an appointment to talk to you and when you feel like a frumpy clown, you act like a piece of crap and allow people to treat you as such. Perception of self is key! I know I used to think that self mantras sound like a crock of shit ie: “You are worthy! You are loved, value and wanted. You deserve respect” etc. Now I realize the importance of really embedding those thought in your mind.

Thoughts aka self talk, really do make a difference in your views. One day you are lost, and another day, maybe weeks or months, sometimes years later you have this newfound strength. Where did it come from? When did you get so strong? However it happens, we as women, minority women especially, really have to see that we are worthy of real love, and it starts with loving yourself and them temple you are in, despite how many minority men and other women treat us, but that’s another post for another day!

Anyway…..

I am determined to fill my temple with good things: good thoughts, good foods, good vibes, good love, good music, good everything. If your vibes don’t blend with my lifestyle then you are not meant for this season of my life, unfortunately. Sometimes the people most negative are those that are closest to you, there isn’t anything wrong with taking a step back, building alone and then decide if want to re-introduce them back into your improved circumstance or deciding to keep them at a distance indefinitely. You have one life, one body one mind…take care of its balance and synergy.

I took all those broken pieces I once didn’t know what to do with, and I put them back together differently this time. 

Who I am and who I am working to become is culminating quite nicely. Make conscious decisions, take healthy, calculated risks and start building. People will want to see you fall, rid yourself of those people, find supportive new ones. You would be surprised how new people can support you better than those you have known a lifetime. Take away peoples bullets and turn it into confetti.

Happy, healthy, journey my loves xoxo