Embrace who you are

I had to share this beautiful message from Rachel Farnsworth, The Stay at Home Chef. When she talks about how she waited to feel beautiful until after her jaw surgery, and then she still didn't feel beautiful, man, that resonated. How many times have you said to yourself something like,"When I get in shape, when I lose weight, when my grows out, when I can buy nicer clothes, etc...." then I will feel beautiful. We've got to stomp on that awful tape that repeats in our brain and feel happy and beautiful now. Why are we waiting? I know it isn't easy. But we've got to encourage one another and work on being happy in the skin we're in, right now.

Here is the transcript from her video: I recently got this comment on my blog: You look like you're 70 with your gray hairs. You really should consider dying them for TV so you don't look like such an old hag....Just a suggestion. I'm 31 years old and I've got a fair amount of gray hair as you can see. Now normally I just share recipes, but today I wanted to take a minute to talk about this comment and address it publicly because this is something I feel strongly about. My husband actually feels very strongly that I shouldn't dye my hair and his reasoning is that he wants us to grow old together. How cute is that? If you read my about me page you'll find that I have a rare autoimmune disease that means that I will most likely never live to be 70 years old. Every sign of aging that I have is a sign that I'm still alive. A lot of people don't get the privilege to ever live to be old, and I probably won't either. Which means that I don't have time to waste criticizing myself and I don't have time to waste criticizing other people. I care a lot more a bout what my life is like right now. I was born with a genetic jaw deformity and it showed up in puberty really prominently. And of course there were plenty of kids who took the opportunity to point that out to me and make fun of me. And I let it completely break me. I felt like I was some sort of hideous monster. I had to wait until I was older and an adult and finished growing before I could get it fixed. And I always told myself that once I finally got that surgery I would be happy and I would be beautiful then...

That surgery came and went and I was really happy for a little bit and then once the excitement wore off I realized that I was just me and I was the same person I'd always been and I still felt the exact same way about myself. It has taken me more than a decade of really hard work to change the way that I felt about myself. I have a crooked nose with a hook in it. I've got freckles and bags under my eyes I've got a yellow tint to my skin. I have hairs that grow in places i don't want them to. I fluctuate in weight and carry more pounds than I'd like to sometimes. I've got wrinkles and stretch marks and sunspots and scars all over my body. And I also have gray hair. And I love all of it. It has taken me a long time to learn that. The world needs more people who will build each other up instead of tearing each other down. The world needs more men like my husband who are willing to encourage women to embrace who they are. The world needs more women who are willing to rock their bodies exactly the way that God made them. Be that person.