My Commitment To My Body [Upcoming Event Tease....]
I've spent the past four years being completely dedicated to my mental and emotional self-care. I've had regular therapy sessions, did video journaling, listened to mental health podcasts and read self-help books.After living with depression for a good chunk of my twenties, I was over it. I wanted to feel happy and healthy again so I made a big decision to fight through my depression and anxiety with every tool I could.But my physical health? That remained a challenge. I found it so hard to love this body that had birthed two children and looked so drastically different that it had at the beginning of my 20s. My thighs were juicier and less defined, my abs were completely gone, and my breasts were still plump but just a bit lower than I would have liked.Winter found me huddled up in my "armor": big chunky sweaters that hid the parts of me I hated. And while my mental health yearned for warmer temps and sunshine, my physical self was cringing at the thought of bare arms and shorts.So I dusted off my gym membership and started challenging myself to bust a sweat a few times a week, not to change how I look in the mirror, but to simply move. To feel my thighs conquer the Stairmaster. To listen to my Kendrick Lamar Pandora station uninterrupted. To give my heart a workout so it stays strong.After almost two months as a gym regular, my relationship with my body (this body) feels less like a battle, regardless of what the scale says.Learning to love your body, or, at the very minimum, make peace with it is what Ivy Felicia, my good friend and founder of Me, My Body and Love, is all about.She's a body relationship coach and her main goal is to help women navigate their complicated relationships with their physical selves and turn it into something resembling friendship.She will be joining me this June in the DMV area for a self-care workshop on this very topic.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing more information, including the specific date, location and ticket link. We want to see 30 women come together for an afternoon of conversation about the lens through which we see ourselves and how we can walk away feeling more empowered in our bodies.