Two blog posts in a week? What?? I am on fire! Kidding, not really. But now that we are transitioning from black history month to women’s history month, I thought it would be good to talk about improving women’s mental health and body confidence. I am also thinking of writing a 30 day devotional to help someone kick start their body confidence journey. Would any of you be interested in reading that? Let me know in the comments below!

I thought about it because a lot of times, people think that because you are body positive that you have it all together. That you are this person that consistently has confidence through the roof. While sometimes that may be the case, most times, body positive people work on their confidence daily. There will be some highs and some lows, but they make it a point to work on their confidence daily. That doesn’t mean that certain things won’t trigger you or affect you, it simply means that you have a ritual or practice that helps you process it.

Story time! So, because of my weight, I always have other women giving me unsolicited dieting or weight loss tips in regular conversation. One time, while getting my hair blown out in Miami, I made no comment about my weight, but this woman suggested I do keto because she lost 20 pounds. I told her that’s great that she lost 20 pounds and that’s awesome that keto is working for her, but I am just not interested. She continued to talk about it and I just stopped responding altogether. In that moment, I had decided that her unsolicited dieting advice was not going to affect my first time in Miami negatively. After getting my hair blown out, I went shopping and bought a crop top. I did something to build myself up instead of allowing what she said to tear me down.

More recently, I was on a school trip to Birmingham Alabama, I am in school for a Master’s Degree in theology, so we were there for a theological/social justice conference. While grabbing coffee before going to a morning session, one of my classmates tried to convince me to go vegan. Telling me how what I eat, affects my mental health (while I do not disagree, she doesn’t know me, nor does she know what I eat) and that me and my children are unhealthy. She has not met my children and most importantly, she does not have a medical degree or my medical records to assume my health. She assumed that based solely on my weight.

After shutting down the discussion, I began to have doubts about myself based off of her words. It was in that moment that I had to redo all of the work that I had done to my body confidence because of one random person’s words. I looked in the mirror and reaffirmed myself of who I am as one of God’s children. I told myself that I am wonderfully and beautifully made in God’s image and to reject that would be rejecting the image of God. Then I talked with my therapist about why it bothered me so much and we went through exercises to get me back to a healthier place mentally.

We all have those moments where we get consumed with what other people think of us, the beauty though, is when we stop comparing ourselves to others and start loving ourselves. (Outfit deets: Blazer, Pants, shoes)

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