Within

I’m feeling much better now!  Thank you to my wonderful sister in law for the gracious comment!  You are just as beautiful as you say I am!  And to my friend in Germany…you made me feel much better today.  And to those on Facebook, the messages and notes have been nice too!

It’s true, that being apart from my sailor played a big role on my frustrations about myself.  But, our separation and the lack of his attention is not to blame.

However, this whole ordeal got me thinking about myself and others like me.  I generally have a very good self image of myself and try not to get bothered by negative thoughts, but I guess I can’t get away from it all the time.

I believe, that sometimes, a person can be told over and over again that they are beautiful, but it is all meaningless unless that person believes it themselves.  Just today I saw a statistic that only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful.  That number is seriously low and makes me feel sad. 

I am a mother of two beautiful daughters and I want them to always believe and have the confidence that they are beautiful.  I understand that as their first role model I have to teach them that you can have the  appearance of being beautiful, but unless you carry yourself with respect, kindness and be slow to judge that your inner beauty will outshine the physical.

It’s so much easier said than done. Out of the three characteristics, the slow to judge is the hardest.  I read on a blog not too long ago about us women putting each other down when really it’s our low self esteem that makes us judgmental.  How often do you find yourself putting another woman down without knowing who they are because they have nice hair or awesome clothes or great legs?  Or how often do you judge yourself harshly when you walk past another woman who has what you don’t?  I have to be honest, I do it often and almost every day.  It’s a trait that I need to work on and fix. It’s a habit that I don’t want my daughters to inherit.

Our children, especially our daughters, are bombarded on a daily basis on fake beauty.  They are told that all these materialistic possessions will make them look and feel beautiful.  But it never will.  It will never truly make you believe you are and it will make you want more. Our daughters need to own it, possess it and believe that who they are, not what they have, is what makes them a beautiful person.

I want our daughters to always feel the beauty from within.  Then, maybe more than 4% of our daughters will believe that they are truly beautiful women.

So, do you believe you are beautiful?