Self-Love & Confidence

a dichotomous perspective.

The unsolicited judgment I experienced during my weight loss was intense and disheartening. Before I fell into the background and felt like a nobody. Now you’re in the center of attention and feel like an impostor. You don’t feel accepted on either side, nor do you feel like you belong. Ever since I started taking care of my appearance, I sense when people feel uncomfortable around me because they make snap judgments and perceive me to be stuck up because I am into makeup and fashion. It’s heartbreaking when people make false assumptions of who I am when I know that compassion is at the core of my heart. But what I’ve come to terms with is that you can’t control people’s perception of you. The world isn’t always fair, and perception is unfortunately reality at times. All you can do is stay true to yourself.

I also started to get more attention from men, but often questioned whether they’d like me the same if I looked differently. I constantly doubted myself and dug deep to better understand the things I hated most about myself. I realized that the “confidence” I had built up for years was actually insecurity & codependency masked in deep-rooted patterns from childhood. To recover from these emotional wounds, I had to remember to be patient and kinder to myself. I had to remember that healing wasn’t always linear. The more I was aware of my triggers, the more opportunities I had to practice self-love. By leaning into my pain, I discovered my strength and uncovered a new depth of confidence - a self-worth that could not be taken away or defined by another person’s perception of me or desire for me.

This experience unlocked a deeper layer of empathy within me that can only be known from personal experience - one can only be felt because it was uprooted from pain. It’s shown me the sad reality of human judgment and our hyperfocus on external validation.

My warped views of beauty surfaced when I was a child, but my disillusionment with worth brought me to the truth. As a young girl, my mom had always pressured me to dress well, brush my hair, and look presentable. She was worried people would judge me and not treat me well if I didn’t take care of my appearance. I lived most of my life believing that I was not worthy unless I was the perfect version of myself 24/7. She was thin for most of her life and had become obese. It was her broken attempt to protect me from the judgment and pain that she has experienced. I stopped caring about dressing up for other people and shifted my focus on expressing my style through fashion. It was no longer about validation. It was about challenging myself to be the best version of me - emotionally, physically, and spiritually. You can be overweight and still be confident. You can be “genetically blessed” and still be insecure. Feelings of insecurity show up differently in everyone regardless of their shape or size. But you can overcome perpetual concerns of not belonging and tackle self-doubt by remembering that acceptance starts with you.

Body positivity is about radical self-acceptance regardless of where you’re at in your journey. It’s about accepting and loving who you are today instead of waiting until you’ve hit your ideal BMI percentage. Life is too short to place your happiness in a moment other than the now.