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And it's incredibly fascinating to me. Not because I am an outside observer. Hardly. I am just as susceptible to these promises of beauty as anyone else. But it's so interesting how we are all in a season that tempts us to feel insecure about our beauty, and as an extension of that, our worth. Many of us are not at our "best". We may have overeaten a bit, we may have not exercised as much, we might have not had access, opportunity, or funding to do the beauty regimens that make us feel our best... There's an endless list of how this pandemic has affected us, but the impact on self-worth based on appearance is what I'm here about today.
I'm gonna be honest. Most of my life I have had long hair. If I haven't had it at that moment, I've wanted it. Too many Finesse commercials at a young age maybe, but the definition of beauty to me has always been a head of long, thick, perfectly coiffed hair.
Superficial, and honestly, pretty 90's viewpoint of beauty? Yes and yes. But still, it's something I've always striven to achieve (Enneagram 3 over here, can't help it 😁).
I'm not sure how you've defined your own beauty standard or goals, but I do know that we all have them. For some it's skinny, for some it's strong, for some it's a dress size, for some it's blemish free skin... The list goes on and on, because how we perceive our OWN beauty is all up to us... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and we are our own "beholders".
This week, I cut off most of my hard-earned and truly-treasured hair. Well, technically, I cut it with Ryan's help #brokenhand. It was time. While I cherish my youngest babe, who is truly a light in our lives, pregnancy and postpartum with him basically destroyed my hair. And in the last two months his favorite thing to do has been to grab my hair and play with it every time he has a bottle - leaving chunks missing at a time. I couldn't bear to stop letting him hold my hair, my very last babe, and he finds it so comforting... so, what was left of my once long and precious hair has been thin and damaged for the last six months.
But.
I still didn't want to cut it. It was something I had idolized for so long - something that I felt defined me. Yes, even as I type this, I feel the embarrassment creep up, that this is such a vain and truly ridiculous definition of my own beauty. I KNOW I am so much more than the length of protein that my scalp exudes. But it doesn't FEEL that way.
And that's when I got it. Right now, we know a lot. We know that things feel scary and unknown, we know that we don't have access to the things that we've identified in our "past life" of pre-COVID19 as things that made us FEEL beautiful. Since we KNOW we are not at our best, we FEEL like we are not as beautiful.
YOU GUYS - THIS IS SO NOT TRUE!
I feel like I have to say this all in caps, and hear me please, I am shouting this to the rooftops and also to myself. Your beauty is not defined by meeting all, or any, of the standards that you've set for yourself. We all know (and most of us hate) the mantra, "your beauty is more than your appearance". Yes, we know that. And it IS true. But you still want to feel beautiful - whatever your personal beauty standard is for yourself. And if you do not meet whatever that standard is for yourself - you're disappointed. But the most important question I can pose to you today, and what I posed to myself is - what I am disappointed about? Am I disappointed that I can't look how I want to look? Because I think it matters - say it out loud - I am NOT disappointed in myself - I am doing the best I can in the circumstances that I have been given. I am disappointed that I cannot look the way that I want, but that does not impact the way that I FEEL or KNOW my value of self.
Loving yourself and seeing your own beauty.
So, here we are. For me, this was 10 inches of loss, and growth, at a 1/2 an inch a month, that is 20 months worth of my life, which brings me back literally to the month that Asher was conceived. It felt like a fitting length to lose, and yet celebrate all that came from it... And that, for me, is true beauty.
If you ever need it, my dear friends, I'll hold up the proverbially "mirror" to show you just how beautiful you are, and peace to you as we all navigate this new season, this new normal, and how we see ourselves in it... 💓💓💓
