Goddess Shorts
Image by Nick Fewings
Throughout the course or my life, I’ve been a variety of shapes and sizes. Average, overweight, underweight, athletically lean, and profoundly pregnant (people legit asked me if I was having twins). It’s always been fascinating to me how others chose to interact with me at those various physical stages, and most importantly, how I felt – about myself, and about how people seemed to view and treat me depending on my form.
Image by Sean Stratton
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work around this very thing, parsing my own truths from the societal soup I’d been living in. And I’ve come to see that my shape and size is literally one of the least interesting things about me.
About anyone, actually.
And yet, particularly when I spend time with women outside my inner circle, conversations seem to swirl around that very topic, especially lately.
Perhaps it’s a form of perceived connection, like talking about the weather or something? Or maybe it’s part of our tendency as humans to try to control things, especially when the world seems extra chaotic (I mean, I totally compulsively over-exercised as a coping/control mechanism at a time when I’d felt everything had spun out in my life – and I am so thankful to my therapist at the time for helping me learn better tools, and my medical team for helping me rebound from the damage I’d caused my body with that method).
Whatever the reason, I had such a conversation just yesterday, at the dentist of all places.
The hygienist and I typically chat a little before a cleaning, checking in, seeing how life is going, etc.. We have some things in common and it’s always fun to catch up. Among other topics, we spoke about the shifting seasons, and she shared, sheepishly, that she’d just purchased some new shorts in a size up from what she’d been wearing. There was such shame in her voice, such resignation in her posture, and it took me back to a pivotal day in my own life – so I shared it with her, and as I witnessed her come back to her own joy and beauty, I realized I need to share it here too.
Several years ago, my family was planning to go on a tropical vacation and I literally did not have shorts that fit my body. I’d been telling myself I’d “lose the weight” in time for the trip so I could wear the ones I had in my closet (that had fit previously), but it all felt so punitive. It also wasn’t an outcome I could actually control on a tight timeline (if at all), especially in a healthy and sustainable way (which is how I roll post therapy). And I knew in my bones if I continued down that path of trying to force the outcome, I’d only be succumbing to the when-then patterns I’d worked so hard to break and repattern.
Image by Shreyas Sane
The truth is, we do not need to wait for some event or some specific thing to allow ourselves to feel good. We won’t be beautiful or successful “one day” when we’ve achieved some specific weight or form or thing, we already are.
I remember standing in my closet and declaring to my too-small shorts, “I’m a goddess. Right now! And I get to feel like one.” Then I went out and got clothes that fit that iteration of my body. Clothes that I felt beautiful in. Because there was no reason to wait. No reason to try to stuff myself into something that no longer fit. No reason to hold myself to some prescriptive thing or another as though certain metrics must be met before I was somehow worthy of looking or feeling a certain way, or having a certain experience.
We are worthy now. Beautiful now. And we get to support the gorgeous creatures that we are in every iteration, not wish them away or bypass the journey. We get to support our current forms and life experiences with celebration, not shame (which, btw, isn’t supportive at all).
That doesn’t mean we can’t want something different than our current experience and be working toward it. It just means that we love and support where we are in the moment, knowing we are already incredible and more than enough on the way to wherever we are going.
We are living life now. Moment to moment, not some time in the future. How we allow ourselves to be with the present is everything.
When we celebrate along the way, the whole thing becomes much more fun.
So, whether it’s weight or something else, whatever things we may be waiting for certain metrics around before allowing ourselves to feel good, here’s to breaking that pattern and rewriting it. Here’s to being with what is, finding our own versions of goddess shorts, and letting ourselves celebrate. Right now, in the midst of the journey.