For those of you who haven't done so already make sure you follow Lady EL-evated on Instagram @ladyyelevated. On our instagram we have daily topics on just about EVERYTHING. Todays' Intagram topic was SELF LOVE and let me tell you..this topic is so major for me.
When I was younger I struggled with self-love. I always looked at the women in my life that I considered to be beautiful and compared myself to them. I would always point out the things about myself I would change if I could. I wanted to be taller, lighter skinned, longer straighter hair. I wanted green eyes like my mom and bigger breast. I never thought of the things about myself that I loved or found beautiful. To me I was too skinny, I had a baby face, I had acne. I saw Beauty in everyone BUT myself.
My mom, noticed this and made it her mission to stress to me the importance in finding the beauty within me, the importance of loving myself, the importance of embracing myself. I was too young to realize then how my low self-esteem stemmed from a poor self image; a lack of self love.
My mom would always tell me I was beautiful but she knew that they was not enough for me to believe it...I had to see it myself. So she told me one day to look in the mirror EVERY SINGLE MORNING from then on and tell myself that I was beautiful. She told me to do that everyday until I started to believe it. And every day, she made sure I had done that. So for more days than I care to count; I woke up every morning and went into my bathroom and stared at my reflection. I stared at Nakia. Gazing at my brown skin, my big brown eyes, my coarse hair and I murmured the words "You are Beautiful." And although it took me some time after awhile I started to believe it. I started to love my brown eyes even though they weren't green like my mothers they were beautiful and they became my favorite facial feature. I started to love my brown skin and thick hair.
I started to see a difference in myself when I began to love the skin I was in. My self-esteem increased. I no longer sought validation from outside sources because I was validated within.
The journey to self-love is not easy and it never truly ends. Every time I put on a few extra pounds I have to remind myself that I'm still beautiful. When I was pregnant with my son and felt ugly all the time and my skin was going through a million changes I had to remind myself that I was beautiful. When I'm standing next to other women who I find beautiful; I remind myself that I am too. I have to continually make an effort to see the beauty in my natural, unaltered form, because its there. Even when I don't feel like it is, even when I doubt; its there, my beauty is there.
And so is yours...Be You. Love You. ALL ALWAYS...ALWAYS.
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