Divorce Coach’s Guide to Loving “Your-Self”: If My "Big Legs" Could Talk!
by Pav Lertjitbanjong
While divorce can be super damaging to self-esteem, it is also a blessing to be given a gift of self-reflection and ultimately wisdom. As a divorcée, another hurdle I must endure is to rebuild my self-love, knowing that I am enough, that I am perfect by god's design.
Today's pop culture places so much emphasis on perfection and self-improvement, but not enough on "self-acceptance". To love yourself is to accept "Your-Self", every part that makes you YOU, as a whole, RIGHT NOW, inside and outside; not tomorrow, not next year, but THIS MOMENT, TODAY.
If your best friend gained 10 lbs, were you gonna say, "Sorry, I can't love you right now until you drop the muffin top!?" Think about It!. You'd love her anyway. So why are we so much harder on ourselves when we can willingly look past other people's flaws, love them and accept them, just the way they are.
One of the many struggles I’ve always been working to overcome, my whole life, is my body image. While I do not very much like my big legs and still feel a little bit insecure whenever I wear a dress, my legs are not "flawed" and I refuse to call them as such. As I am writing this using Microsoft Words, I look up synonyms for the word ‘flaws’ and the following words show up: faults, errors, defects, mistakes, ..., weaknesses.
“My legs are not faults, not errors, not defects, not mistakes. They are certainly not weakness. They are parts of gods’ design that serve many important purposes.”
They are actually pretty strong legs – if you could only see how I kick! Without my big legs, I would not be able to walk, drive, swim, travel the world and do many other things that I love. They are my big legs. They are “My-Self”. I happened to inherit my dad’s short-and-muscular-leg genes. It is particularly difficult to find long boots that fit me or a short dress that makes me not look like a bodybuilder. Lucky me!!
Till these days I still do not like how my legs look, but I do not feel the urge to like them because they are here to stay. I do not feel the need to embrace them, make them something that they are not or would never be (e.g. long, skinny legs). Just as other parts of my body, so too I respect my big legs. And together as one, we coexist peacefully and harmoniously in this body.
“My big legs are essential parts of my body. When I walk, I ‘feel’ happy, which means my body and my mind are oneness.”
If my big legs could talk, here is what they would say:
“Thank you so much for being awesome you! I am so grateful to be your companion wherever you go and introduce you to the world full of beauty, love, joy and laughers! You are just perfect the way you are. We may not always get along, but how darn lucky we are to be our daddy’s daughter – you can always see him in us.”