Angie – She Is Strong

I’m a crazy, busy mama of three, still in the trenches of grief after losing my mum. I’m like any other human who makes mistake after mistake, who has walked with a giant elephant of self-hatred for years resting on my chest. Combined with a decade of fad diets, post partum depression and a world that told me I wasn’t good enough. It led to an unhappy Angie. I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn’t recognize. I brought a beautiful girl into this world and questioned my ability to mother her in a time where she would grow to quite possibly feel about herself the way I felt about ‘my self.’

I began to devour Geneen Roth’s words (Women, Food and God, An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything). I started to find beauty in this body again. I stopped the dreaded diets. Not a food scale, Weight Watchers point or gigantic restriction in sight. Never again. Not taking care of myself would have made my mum angry, not making healthy choices wouldn’t bring her back, but the cycle was hard to break. Hear me when I say, there is so much more to a person than what you see on Instagram or Facebook. There is a lot you won’t see; we aren’t wired to share the midnight snack or the “I miss my mum” melt down on the kitchen floor.

I’m here to tell you, to encourage you, that if you find yourself in my shoes, there’s hope. I’ve learned to be kind to myself, to be graceful, to stop the vicious mess of insecurity, to stop basing my success on the scale. I’m learning every day, in every choice I make, how to be the woman I want my daughter to grow to be. And for the first time in my entire life, I’m becoming a healthier version of myself, without the confines of a blasted diet. I enjoy these newfound muscles. I love finding my clothes are looser. What I am most happy with? Looking in the mirror and seeing someone who finally cares enough about herself to smile. Yes, I have before and after photos, but they aren’t to measure the success of my kettle bells. They’re to remind me what self-love looks like. Guess what? It looks good.

 

Contact Angie: www.angiewarren.com
Instagram: @angiewarrenwrites