Good things will happen when you paint your love...

Last week blogger Mooreaseal wrote a hauntingly beautiful post about bullying and learning how to overcome self doubt and love yourself again. I wont speak too much about the post because it is already so well write on her  blog, but her story really resonated with me personally because I allowed other people to influence the way I felt about myself and eventually it affected how I treated my body. I won't get too personal or specific because its a long and icky story but I was verbally attacked through the Internet by a few different people with a few different motives for insulting me within the same week. The insults affected me so much was because it was the first time I had ever been told to I was 'unattractive' and 'fat.' It really hurt, as it would hurt any human. I had always felt I was beautiful.  I liked my physical appearance. I liked my long brown hair, my pale freckled skin, the angles of my face and my large eyes... but that all changed. I began to feel like I wasn't worthy of beauty. I turned to comfort food to fill the pain in my heart which lead to emotional weight gain. Once I gained weight I felt even worse about myself and just recently realized that I am the only thing standing between myself and feeling beautiful. In Moorea's entry she encouraged her readers to celebrate themselves in a small way... painting ones nails. Now I will admit that my life wasn't changed by being prompted to lacquer my nails but I felt touched by her personal story so I figured I would paint my nails to support Mooreaseal's strength. This became a much more meaningful experience, I will get to that in a couple sentences. I bought a nail polish for 99 cents at Shopko that was the exact same color as my go to "I-have-nothing-to-wear-that-doesn't-make-me-feel-awful-but-this-coral-sweater" sweater because I really love how the color looks against my skin. I had a hard time at first feeling the self love as I tried to photograph my nails because I am actually quite self conscious of my slightly plum fingers. Mooreaseal had written about accepting who we are physically so that's what I set out to do. Last night before I went to bed I was playing around with my camera to stage a pose that would be most flattering for my chubby digits when I had a "myspace vanity photo moment" and began doing silly poses. I didn't think about putting any photos from my mini photo shoot on the blog until I popped my SD card into the computer and saw a picture of myself I really liked. I was just going to save the silly picture, below, for myself to be personal confidence boost but decided to share it as well as Mooreaseal's story to encourage my fellow bloggers to love themselves. 

I enjoy the photo, above, because when I look at it I don't see any thing to be critical of at all. My hair is curly, my eyes are big, my freckles are popin'  and best of all my fingers are not nearly as chubby as my brain thinks they are! I feel beautiful.

What makes you feel confident and beautiful?