Do I Feel Beautiful?

When I was six or seven, I remember going to ballet class.  I remember this one particular class, three or four of the girls were huddled around having a conversation about eye and hair color.  One little girl said to the other, "My eyes are sparkly blue, and I have beautiful blonde hair.  You have doody-brown eyes and doody-brown hair."  The other little girl started to argue with her, and insisted that her mom told her that her hair was dirty blonde, NOT doody-brown.  I was the shy, quiet kid, so I stayed out of the conversation, especially since I DID have doody-brown eyes AND doody-brown hair.

For some reason this conversation stuck in my head.  Stuck for a long time.  From that day forward, I didn't think brown eyes and brown hair could be pretty.   I didn't get hung up on the fact of it.  I just knew they could never be pretty, ignored them, and focused on other things about myself that still had a chance to be pretty. Throughout my entire life, if anyone every complimented my eyes or my hair color, I never believed them, and passed it off as them just trying to be nice.  Doody-brown eyes can't be pretty.  They weren't even that pretty hazel-y brown color, or even black.  Black eyes would be cool. They were just doody-brown, and I ignored them.

Then my daughter was born.  She got her daddy's eyes in shape, but they weren't hazel like his, they were doody-brown like mine.  She got so many compliments on her eyes, and I dismissed them all.  Brown eyes can't be pretty, I still told myself.

When my daughter began to talk, I began to see the power of my words over her. I could never tell her that her eyes weren't pretty, even if they were doody-brown. I began imagining her coming home from school one day upset because her eyes weren't sparkly blue like a classmate of hers. What would I tell her then? That brown eyes can't be pretty?  It was at that moment that those voices silenced. Those little six year old girls from my ballet class finally stopped talking in my head and telling me that brown eyes can't be pretty.  I looked into my little girl's eyes, and I finally realized how beautiful brown eyes really could be.

Did that change how I viewed myself though? Not a bit.  Brown eyes could be pretty, but mine still weren't.  I wasn't hung up on it. I wasn't insecure about it.  It was just a fact that this part of me could never be pretty.

Then, just like in the movie Inception, an idea began to take hold in my head.  A simple idea, that was introduced to me by a talk by Rev. Carlton Pearson.  The idea was that you have created this moment for yourself right now. You agreed to be here, doing this, in this circumstance right now at some point in your past, you just might not remember.

This idea spread to different aspects of my life, and then one day when I looked in the mirror, I felt like I saw my eyes for the first time. I saw them for what they truly were.  They were something I had agreed upon, long ago, before I was born.  For those who don't believe in reincarnation, this is a crazy notion. But to me, it all suddenly made sense. I looked at my eyes, and I saw my father's eyes.  Before I was born I chose these eyes because I loved my father's eyes. Then I looked at my nose, it was my mother's nose.  I chose this nose because I loved my mother's nose.  I chose every part of myself with an intention of full and complete total love, and I agreed upon every aspect of this body.  What a beautiful work of art we all are.

It's only when we get caught up in society's notion of what is beautiful, that we begin to forget how beautiful and chosen with love every part of us truly is.  We chose each part of ourselves without any preconceived notions or ideas about what "beauty" should be. You didn't choose your eyes because you thought other people would think they were beautiful. You chose your eyes because YOU thought they were beautiful. Your body shape, your hair, your personality, were all picked because YOU loved them.  We need to get back to that place.  A place where YOU LOVE YOU each and every piece.  It's not a competition because each "beauty" is different in each of us, and each one is beautiful.

Now bodies change, people age, we get fatter, wrinkly, droopier, but the concept doesn't change.  Love you for you.  Love the journey you've traveled, and how your body has supported that.  Start loving those places that are the hardest for you to love, and you will begin to see why they show up that way.  Get rid of the guilt, the judgement, the voices we've carried in our head, and begin to love your body like you did in the beginning.