Learning to Love Myself

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I know, I know it has been a while, but I wanted to start the year in this blog with something dear to my heart; self-love. I have wanted to write a blog about this for a while now but I have not had the inspiration to do so (LOL who am I kidding, I have been lazy as heck).

A few days ago one of my best friends messaged me “I am getting stretch marks” like it was something to be worried about. This message made me think a lot about myself because I have not always been confident in my own skin because of my own insecurities. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about my story with self-love and how I have come to accept myself with all my flaws.

I am from the Dominican Republic. People from there tend to think that people with flaws are not beautiful. So, since I was a little girl I used to HATE myself because I had cellulite, uneven skin, and, the worst of all, stretch marks. I could never look at myself in the mirror without pointing out something that I did not like about my body. I used to spend hours and hours looking on the internet how to get rid of those imperfections that I have. I even used to see my classmates and envied them because they did not have all the flaws that I did. (sad, so sad) I did not have anyone to talk to about my insecurities. I felt that nobody had the same problems that I did because for some strange and bizarre reason nobody around me had imperfections (at least that is what I thought).

I was like this for 18 years of my life. Now, you are probably asking yourself “GURL, how did you start loving yourself?!?” well… First of all, I moved to another country (not because I did not like myself, but for other reasons LOL). This helped me a lot because I got out of that toxic bubble of perfectionism and I got to see the world in a different way. After leaving the DR I started to investigate a lot about how to accept myself instead of wasting my time figuring out how to change myself in order to accept my body. I found amazing and inspiring people on the internet that made me feel great about having imperfections; they made me realize that instead of wasting my time hating myself I should spend my time loving myself.

I started to realize that I should be happy that I DO have the things that I have because it means that I have GROWN; I started to love my stretch marks and cellulite and uneven skin because it means that I am HUMAN. We are meant to be imperfect, nobody in this world is perfect; we are meant to be raw. I started to think that I have to love myself because nobody has the fortune of having this body; nobody has the fortune of having my stretch marks, my cellulite and my uneven skin.

Learning to love ourselves can be hard. We live in a world where people see lines or bumps in our body as “disgusting” and “ugly.” So when we see that we have these lines we start to belittle ourselves because other people belittle those beautiful lines. If I never got the courage to stop listening to those ignorant comments I do not think that I would have ever become who I am today. And it is hard… It is hard, but it is not impossible.

This blog is dedicated to my best friend and all of those women that think that they are not beautiful because they have imperfections. Dear ladies, you ARE beautiful because of your imperfections.

Thank you for reading, until next time!

xoxo

(some people, videos and blog posts that have helped me open my eyes)

Ashley Graham

Cinta Tort Cartró

“How and why I love my body”

Taylor Giavasis and her amazing Instagram page thenakediaries

Advertisement