I remember walking on the road a couple of years back with my younger sister and her emphatically saying in her heavily punctuated Jamaican accent, “Joniel you know every car you pass you look in the mirror”. I was guilty as charged, a habit I had developed over the years, always glaring at my reflection in the windows of any parked vehicle, or store window I was passing. You would think I’m obsessed, like Narcissus our friend from Greek mythology and I’m quite sure that’s exactly what my sister thought but it was quite the opposite.

I had low self esteem, barely any confidence and I barely ever dared to talk to people.

I didn’t think I was much to look at, for as long as I could remember I have been battling weight issues, and being overweight made me feel fat and ugly. Even at the age of 10-12 I remember always feeling the need to exercise and I did, luckily my dad had a couple of gym equipment around the house. I also danced so that helped to keep some of the weight off. By high school, my body seemed to have plateaued at 152 lbs. to my 5″ 7’ structure and that worked out a little for me, (mind you I still thought I was fat). Looking back now during my teens I was not fat, maybe a bit plumper than girls in my year group and deviant from what pop culture viewed as beauty, but not fat. I was suffering from what I like to call chronic insecurity. Most of this stemmed from home. My parents did the best they could coming from their respective backgrounds and I’m forever indebted to them, but there were just some things they just didn’t get right, mostly because they weren’t taught this themselves.

My parents incessantly compared my sister and me ad nauseam. It always felt as though we were inadvertently being ‘coaxed’ into standards being set by the other. Your sister is super skinny and modelesque, be skinny and modelesque too. There was always some degree of pressure to be like her and I’m sure at times she too felt pressured into being like me. It’s never okay to make people feel inadequate despite their ‘shortcomings’. I put that in air quotes because the standards of the world regarding beauty are becoming more and more corrupted and unrealistic.

What I’m saying to you today is you are FINE. You are FREE and INDEPENDENT of NOT being ENOUGH, you are more than enough, yes you are all that and a bag of chips. Whether you’re a size 0 or a size 20, whether you have to still shop in the kiddies department for jeans or you gotta get your jeans custom made, you are sexy, you are beautiful. If you are the only one that agrees, shut out all the other voices and listen to yourself because it’s time you listened to you. I didn’t overcome my insecurities until I began to love every inch of me, my hips that I thought weren’t broad enough, my hands that I thought were too manly, my lips that I thought were too thick, my breasts that I wish were so firm you could pop them with a needle and my butt that I once thought could only fit in “bingos” “(large underwear), etc.. Yes, all that jazz, what I thought were my flaws to this day turns out to be some of the things people admire about me, but it started with me loving them first. Whenever I felt insecure about my body I always found comfort in this scripture; Psalm 139:14, which says

I am fearfully and wonderfully made, say it till you believe it. Fill in your name and say it!

So here are some tips to help you and they are from my own experience:

1) Eat healthy, this not only helps you to keep a healthy body weight but keeps you younger for longer. See your doctor or a nutritionist if you want more benefits from this or if you just aren’t sure what to eat and what not to eat.

2) Always be positive, shut out the negative and take time to refocus on what you want from your body. Make goals if necessary and take note of them, develop a strategy, and stay committed to your cause.

3) Learn to love your body, Everything about you. Highly recommend this exercise, find a private place, and strip down. Look at all of you for at least 4 minutes, just stand and look at you, then say your name and the phrase I love you. Repeat this for at least a week, your goal is to do this without critiquing yourself. By the end of the week, you should develop a new appreciation for yourself. Depending on your degree of insecurity this may take longer.

4) Surround yourself with people who celebrate you

5) Get counseling if you are suffering from depression related to your insecurities, you may choose to go formal or informal: the friends I shared my feelings with were a big help. I also found that reading self-help books such as The Confident Woman by Joyce Meyers helped me.

6) Lastly and probably the most important, remember you are not what society says you are. Your identity is found in Christ and you were made in His image.

Insecurity can be a real pain in the neck and really difficult to overcome but I believe in you. I overcame and you can too, there were times I even rebutted compliments, but now I just say Thank you, because I am beautiful and worthy of every word of compliment I received.

Love you all and remember we are all under construction.

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