2012: The Year Of Preparing For Awesome. Part 2

OK, so when I left off a few posts ago I showed you what I looked like before The Huge Hairstyle Change. Here’s what I looked like afterwards:

I cut off 4 inches, got a keratin treatment (my hair’s new best friend), and went straight instead of curly. I LOVE it!! I felt like the burden of the past 5 years of illness lightened up a bit with all the hair I got rid of, and I finally feel that my hair matches the essence of who I am. Plus, with my new style there’s definitely no more hiding behind my hair anymore, which is both scary and exciting.

And speaking of hiding, in order to really affect the changes I’ve been wanting, I had to stop spending all my time and energy on trying to hide my body (which wasn’t really working anyway). The scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life up to this point was the time I took a class on and then performed stand-up comedy five years ago (scroll down to the second group of posts, if you’re interested in reading about that). But coming out of hiding about what my body and I actually look like after the past 5 years of being battered by the effects of illness and medication is definitely Number Two.

I have a lot more to say about weight and body image and whatnot, things that I’ve learned and wrestled with and worked through, but that is material for another post. This post is more of a quick summing up the work I’ve done this year in getting myself to a place where I feel fabulous about turning 40. And as part of that work I’m taking a very deep breath and coming out of hiding just a little bit more by posting a recent picture of myself. I”m not quite brave enough to do “Before”, but you can just imagine someone who is completely ashamed of her body, hides in over-sized, sloppy clothes and dodges the camera as if her life depends on it.

This picture is me now, after a l-o-o-o-o-o-t of (and still ongoing) work on making peace with (and actually befriending) my body, coming to terms with the way my body looks right now, in this moment, while still working on the goals and desires I have for it, learning to dress  in a way that flatters my body right now, in this moment, and-and this is the really huge part, the part that has taken me 40 years to be able to say-realizing that I am pretty right now, in this moment. And that feels pretty damn awesome.