voice.

Born.

Moms.

If you exist you have one. If you are 5 you worship them. If you are 13 you hate them. If you are 16 you challenge them. If you are 20 you learn to appreciate them. If you are 25 you start getting comments that you remind people of them. If you are 30 you get to be a mom to. If you are 46 you get to turn to them and ask them HOW the HELL they survived.

Basically, moms are pretty incredible... And with out them, none of us would exist.

I just got home from spending a week on vacation with my own mom... During that time I really realized how much our relationship has grown and changed in the past year.

Watching my mom go through loosing her mom was one of the hardest things. People dont really realize how fragile life is, until its lost. I dont think that anyone of us ever pictures or thinks about the moment when we will no longer have our moms or dads... But the truth is that death is inevitable, and there will be a day where we have to come face to face with that fact.

As I spent those days with her it really dawned on me how much I need her and how much I respect, love, and treasure her.

Something that I should show far more often....

Thinking about my grandma and how much I wish that I had said and done for her just to show her how much she ment to me. Never getting the chance.

You just dont find closure.

I dont want to have that same feeling with my mom or my dad. I want them to someday leave me knowing how much they ment to me and how much I learned, loved, and prospered because of them.

Its such a heart wreching and SCARY thought... Someday I wont have my mom too run to in order to fix my problems, hold me, give me advice. Someday I will have to be a strong and loving mother. Someday I will no longer be someones child...

But before that someday comes I feel like it is my biggest feat and challenge as a daughter to give back to my parents... And show how much I truley appreciate and love them.

This last week was one I will never forget.

Yes, there were times I needed my space, rolled my eyes, or bite my tough. But more often then not I was so happy to have her there with me.... Someday.... Ill miss those moments, and long for more of them.

My mom said to me, how it feels SO weird not to have her parents around anymore. How she feels like now there is no one that she can run to for comfort at ANY time. How she isnt someones little girl anymore... How strange it feels to know that her mom and dad are gone.

When she was saying this I saw how hard it must be... Because my unbreakable mom, is breakable when she talks about it. And it scared me... I cant imagine not having them around. I cant imagine not being someones little girl anymore.

I also realized how amazing my mom is for handling that kind of pain with such dignity. I know I could not do it. I only strive to have the kind of strength that she has.

Its quite incredible.

Pressures.

Today as I was making flash cards for my Abnormal Child Psychology class I came across a shocking fact.

Nearly 70% of girls ages 8-14 have been on extreme diets, and nearly 35% of them end up developing a eating disorder.

These statistics really struck me.

We all know someone who is always dieting, complaining that they are fat, watching what they eat, or obsessed with exercise.

I have to admit... I do it. I do it quite often in fact. I obsess over maintaining my image, my body...

Reading about the dangers and risks that come with this crazy obsession to be skinny-really made me take a moment and reflect on how I and many other people I know,  have used weight or "jean size" to defy how good we feel about ourselves.

When I was a child... Skinny would defiantly not have been the word to describe me. I liked my pizza, brownies, and pasta WAY too much.

"Popular" or "beautiful" would not be the words either. I defiantly was not either of those things. I got teased a lot about my weight... and always felt extremely self conscious about it.

Then the wonderful age of 13 came and I hit a huge growth spurt. For the first time in my life I was fitting into size 0 or 1 jeans.

All the sudden I had a ton of friends, a boy friend, and was popular.

Needless to say, it felt wonderful.

As I grew older my weight continued to fluctuate more or less. There was a time in high school when I once again put on a few pounds.... Once again I felt the wrath of social pressure upon me.

People would say terrible things about me, and sooner or later they got back to me. It was like a stab to the heart each time.

After years and years of struggling with an up and down cycle of gaining, loosing, obsessing... My body finally has reached a good place.

I am not stick skinny, nor am I overweight. But, most importantly I am not worried or self conscious about myself 24/7.

Today I sit here thinking about how it felt in the past. How it felt to hear people say those things about me. How it felt that how much I weigh or how I looked, was the reason I gained friendships, a boyfriend, and status. How it felt to look at myself and not be able to point out one positive thing I liked about me.

This is NOT ok.

No little girl should ever have to feel that she is not good enough because of how her body looks.

It is not fair that the qualities that people consider "popular" or "beautiful" are not representative of more then half of the population of women in the world.

It is WRONG and sick that I felt those things about myself. And even more saddening is the fact that when I lost weight... People treated me better.

I was not a different person. I just LOOKED better.

Reading about how some girls take this pressure to look a certain way to the point of killing themselves really makes my heart ache.

Being who I am now. I wish I could go back to myself back then and tell myself to stop worrying so much about what everyone else perceives me as, and start working on how I see myself.

Because at the end of the day, I am in a much better place then probably 80% of the people who made me feel inadequate.

This topic is so real,  and it breaks me into pieces knowing that there are hundreds of little girls out there feeling this way. Striving to be someone and something that they are not, getting teased, dieting, dying.

Doesn't that make you sick?

Sometimes I wonder... How would people that are so caught up in looking perfect and looking down on those who dont, feel if THEY had a child who was starving herself or himself in order to make everyone else around them love them? Would they be ok with that? Is it worth the status or the label of being beautiful?

No.

So please, I beg you to take a stand with ME and try our hardest to end this.

I dont want to obsess over my weight.

I want to love me just how I am.

I want my own definition of "beauty"

I want to eat that damn burrito.

I dont want to keep track of each meal I have... Or feel guilty after every bite.

I want peace with my body.

But most of all...

I want to show younger girls who feel like I used to feel...

That they are BEAUTIFUL and that one day they will look back on the people who made them feel bad about themselves and only feel pity for them.

No one should have to loose their life in order to feel like they are accepted.

I hope that I can keep this promise to myself and stop obsessing about my body, and accept myself as beautiful, at any size.

Because in the end.

Outer beauty ALWAYS fades, but inner beauty shines till in end.

xoxo

Kicked Around.

I have a few things that really bother me about people.

Most of the time I consider myself pretty tolerant and open minded about how other people choose to live their lives.

But there are some things that I just cannot help but feel agitated by.

For example, how certain girls think they are "in love" with each and every single guy that comes into their life. 

We all know these girls... They jump from relationship to relationship with out taking any time to figure out why things dont ever work out. 

Its quite annoying that they think that it is ok to throw around the word "love" like it doesn't mean anything. 

I dont understand how you can say that someone is  "the love of your life", and then a few months later profess that someone else is now "the love of your life" and a few months after that.... 

Get the cycle?

Sure, most of use will love a variety of men throughout our life. "First Love" does not mean it will be your last or only love. But, I can say with confidence that none of us find the "one" in each man that comes into the picture. 


But apparently some women have the illusion that anyone can be "the one".

I used to be jealous of them. I used to spend a countless amount of energy thinking: why can I get that many people to fall in love with me? Is there something wrong with me? What is so special about them and not me? What would it feel like? Am I not pretty enough? Am I not good enough?

A few years later, I can now see how stupid it was of me to be consumed with jealousy and insecurity, questioning WHY these girls were so much better then me.

I finally figured out, that I would never want to be in the shoes of even one of them.

Now, I realize something very important. These girls dont have real love. In reality, they have no idea what real love even is. 

I now pity them. They think that they need a guy to defy themselves, or make them feel adequate. 

Yeah. I havent had a million boyfriends, kissed 50 people, or dated every fish in the sea. But I have had true love, and I have had ONE person who has stuck by me, through thick and thin.

One person who taught me nearly every lesson about love that I will ever need to know. 

The most important of those lessons was that "love" is not something that can be thrown around person to person. Its rare, and it should never be wasted on each and every person that you date in your lifetime, it should be used on the people whom you TRULY do love. 

And NO you do not love three different guys in a period of 6 months. Clearly, if you think that you do... You probably have some serious attachment issues.

I can not say that my experience with love was always perfect, but it was real. 

Its quite sad for me to admit that I used to envy these women. It finally had dawned on me that they might know a quantity of relationships, but they definitely do not know a quality one.

I just hope that one day these women wake up and realize that they will never break their cycle unless they realize that having a "boyfriend" does not make you 1. smarter, 2. better, 3. prettier, 4. more desirable,  5. respected, 6. a better person, 7. cooler, 8. worthy, 9. more love able, 10. successful. 

YOU make yourself, not some man that you think you "love".

As Carrie Bradshaw put it:

"How is it that women these days have nothing to talk about other then men and relationships? I mean really... Its like middle school but we now have bigger bank accounts!" 

One thing that I learned fromm my lessons in love is that no one will EVER love you unless you love yourself first. 

And that is a fact.