Self Love

This is one of those posts, that will probably bring out the people who disagree with us. I'm going to remind people to be respectful, everyone has their own opinions. Feel free to disagree, but keep it respectful. Anything hateful will not be posted.

Skatha and I talk about self love a lot. It's the reason we started this blog. We're doing what we can to learn to love ourselves, as we are. I know, right there is the problem for people. The idea that, as Skatha says, we should love ourselves for who we are, seems to get under people's skins. I know we have our theories as to why. I love Skatha's theory, when it comes to body image.

"The media shows us the "perfect" woman all the time, "she's" every where and "she" is heavily Photoshopped." We see this, and all of us, male and female, expect that to be what other women are. I've sat back and watched shows and I noticed a trend. Rarely do you see overweight women in shows. I see more overweight men then I see women. This is not saying that men have it better, we all know they get it as much as women. We know then male eating disorders are on the rise. Printed material is even worst for both men and women. I won't touch that one with a ten foot pole.

I think there's a part of it that we're taught to hate imperfections, ours and others. We're constantly striving for this perfection that is unobtainable. We see flaws as something that we should get rid of it, from body, to mind. We race in school to get perfect grades, where our mistakes are constantly pointed out. We noticed that we got so many wrong, rather then so much right. We hear all the time that we need to be a healthy weight, or body type, or have a career, or lose the baby belly, etc.... When it comes to our bodies, we're taught to always pick at our flaws, that you cannot celebrate what you like about your body because it's not society's view of "perfect". Since society doesn't see it as perfect, you can't like it. It doesn't apply to just our bodies though, it spreads to our entire lives.

So why should we advocate for self love? Personally, I think that self love leads to self improvement. When you learn to love yourself, you want to treat yourself with respect. You'll do what is best for yourself, and no one can stop you because you're comfortable in your own skin. Once comfortable in your own skin, you can stop missing the moments in your life, and enjoy it. You're not focused so much on what everyone else is possibly thinking of you, and not remembering the details of the moment. You're focused on what's going on around you, and your life is much more feeling. You're not stressing about everything that's going on, which overall is better for your health. You will find yourself feeling happier, and happy people are more productive people.

Overall, self love is more then just about body image. It's about happiness, and accepting that we are not perfect, no one is. We can stop and look at our flaws objectively, and from there, work on it in a way that will produce life long results, rather then results that don't stick over time.

Welcome Everyone

This is Kari speaking right now.

I've known Skatha for quite a few years now, I'm thinking 15 or 16 years now (not that it truly matters). We've never had the opportunity to meet in person yet (it will happen), but we know a lot of the highs and lows that each other have gone through. One of the things that we've both been talking a lot about lately is fitness. We've both had children, we've both struggled with how we feel about our bodies, not to mention the fact that we've both had to deal with mental health issues. We've been trying to be accountable with what we've been doing with each other, and while talking I said we should do a blog together. And here we are.

We've decided that our overall achievement is to be healthy. I'm not just saying physically healthy, but mentally and emotionally as well. We're learning to rewire our thoughts about life. That weight/size does not determine health, that our bodies are the shape they are and no amount of exercise or toning will change our basic body shapes. We want to learn how to love ourselves, no matter where we are on a fitness level.

At the same time we are working on changing habits to be healthy overall. Some things we can't change (me having hypothyroidism for example), but we can work on changing the things in our control. So here it is, our journeys, our thoughts, laid out so that people can see what we're up to. We're not medical professionals, we're just two girls in two different parts of the world, aiming to be healthy.