The Key

I found the key to loving myself and it isn't to have a partner who tells me every day that I look beautiful (today I believe the exact phrase was "u looked amazing today.") - not that I don't appreciate that and encourage it but the key was me.  I chose every day to fall a little deeper in love with myself.

I remember in College when I first started to see a therapist and was really struggling with being negative and hating myself.  My therapist gave me this exercise where I was supposed to look in the mirror and tell myself that I loved myself.

Needless to say, I failed miserably at that exercise.  I couldn't look in the mirror and face the woman staring back, all I saw was ugliness there and I would just look away after a few seconds.  20 years ago I wasn't ready to learn that lesson, it just wasn't time.

But it was my time now.

I took the path of least resistance and started with my hair - because it has always been the one part of me that I really liked and I focused on it. Even though as a kid I got teased for being a ginger and it made me upset, part of me always liked that I was different, special that way.  Also didn't hurt that I've gotten a lot of compliments about it.  At times when I just felt like a big, blob of sexless fat my long hair made me feel pretty and feminine.

I thought about how my hair colour is tied so much to my personality and that feisty-ness and what makes me - me.  The length, the way it looks like dancing flames in the sunlight...... and I think it's just beautiful.

That I'm beautiful.

I started by looking at myself objectively, as if it wasn't me in the mirror - just a stranger that I was observing with none of the judgments that I'd place on myself.


I looked at the shape of my nose.  The shape and size, and upon close inspection I was taken by how damned adorable it was.  How cute, perky, perfect really.

But if I was entranced with my nose well then my lips were a revelation.  That full bottom lip, the delicate pink .... and that's when I fell in lust.  With that sexy bottom lip.... that delightful smirk, the devious smile.  I traced my finger along my lip, following that line, across to the dimples that flashed in my cheek when I smiled.

And then there were my eyes.

Oh my eyes.

The almond shape and the way the colour changed depending on my mood; navy blue when I was angry or stressed, an almost grey when I was happy, turned on, at peace.

And my lashes, they were so long when I took off my glasses.  I never noticed that before.

I fell in love with the curve of my eyebrow, the light, almost invisible arch.

My heart beat a little faster at the twinkle in my eyes, the depths I saw there, the pain, the beauty....like my friend Daniel says, you really can see a person's soul through their eyes.  And unlike twenty years ago, I didn't look away from the pain this time, I saw it, I honored it and saw that it too was part of the loveliness.

I became enchanted by my eyes.  They drew me in and when I looked at them I knew it was time for the love affair to expand.

In the past my body was a constant disappointment for me, a reason to feel ashamed..ugly.  Having lost over 85 pounds meant a lot of excess skin, scars on the outside from surgeries, hyterectomy and then there were the scars that were on the inside.  Those invisible ones that no one could see but that in my heart I felt were uglier than even that angry red line on my belly left over from removing my cancerous uterus.  A past of sexual abuse and holding onto shame that wasn't mine to hold onto anymore had made it impossible for me to see the beauty in those curves.  The femininity, the vulnerability, the beauty.  People probably wonder why I take so many pictures of myself to post on Facebook and they most likely assume that it's because I'm narcissistic but the reality is that I'm getting to know me, to fall in love with me and sometimes I need that picture to really believe it is me.

I take a picture of the curve of my breast, the bones in my shoulders, those delicate bones that made me cry the first time they appeared when I lost the first thirty pounds.  I take another picture to look at the shape of my bottom - a bum that actually has a shape now....that tapers down from my waist.  Then yet another of my legs, legs that look impossibly long.

It took months this process, this love affair but this first part was kind of superficial... lustful.  (I'm not saying that was a totally bad thing).  What I wanted was not just to love the sum of my parts, I wanted to love ME.  And as I thought about that I realized that love wasn't a noun, it was a verb and if I really wanted to love myself then it was action that was required.

After the diagnosis and the surgery I fell into a depression.  A deep depression.  Cancer had left my body but it still remained in my heart, in my soul...and on my mind.  I couldn't change that.  I couldn't stop myself from thinking every twinge, pain, bump or spot was the cancer returning.  I wasn't sleeping.  I was falling back into that same pattern of escaping life by working and pushing myself to exhaustion.  And I felt like I was on the edge of a breakdown.

Hell, if I was honest I think I actually had a breakdown.

And that is where the action came in.

After giving myself a verbal ass-kicking that I sorely needed about having fought so hard to be well that I wasn't going to let myself throw that (and me) away.  So I got help.  I talked to my doctor, I talked to my boss, I went back to see my therapist.  I took Friday's off and shortened my work week to 4 days instead of 5.  Despite a lot of internal conflict I broke down and started taking anti-depressants.  I started to be honest about what I needed and that included sleep, being around people I love, spending time with my boy...and making time for love.

It's only been a month but already I feel clearer mentally.  I feel rested.  I feel happy.  At peace.

Is the exercise finished?  No.  Every day I commit myself to this life-long love affair with myself.

And life, it has become so very beautiful.