Start Of BL 2009

So, I cannot believe the year has flown by so darn fast! I have had this blog for a year... It really seems like just yesterday that we decided to get together to lose weight and become healthier women together. I have sucked at times with my posts, but through this last year I want to let you all know that your support, and your sharing of your lives has been so wonderful. Going to some of your blogs on days left me crying as my heart hurt with each of you as you struggled, other days when I felt like I couldn't get any lower you left me crying again, with laughter! And here we are again, a new year facing each of us. I am so thankful that we will be able to do it again together. I have formed great friendships, strengthened others and found a passion once again that I thought was lost forever, myself.
I have been struggling of late on body issues, so this has come at the perfect time for me. I need your support in seeing myself through true eyes that are not clouded with self doubt. I am so firm in my belief that we need to instill the gift of self love to our kids, especially our daughters. I am so grateful for Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty, they have an incredible site with teaching tools, discussion boards and videos. Today as I was getting online and an ad popped up for this campaign, my older kids were hanging on me like they often do and I saw a teaching moment. I explained to my kids that the world is filled with images that are beautiful, but a lot of those images are distorted and computer generated. I told my oldest daughter Chantelle (9) that she has to be careful not to compare herself, or try to be like these women. I told my oldest son Tyler (11) that he has to never compare real women to these ads, that he needs to always respect a woman for who she is and never based on how she looks compared to any ad. He said "mom, I already know that. Those women are all fakey, all it is is make-up, wigs and dumb stuff like that" Yay, if he can only keep that view and not be bombarded with all that "fakey" beauty that's so seductive, that we as grown women who know its not real still crave it and put these expectations on ourselves. I showed them the video of the women who is ordinary and beautiful, and what they do to her to make her look "perfect". Chantelle wondered what was wrong with her to begin with, and why they would need to cover up her freckles and shave parts of her at the end, like her neck and why they changed her eyes. Yeah, why?! They had another video, and this is the one I wanted to share, it's self explanatory and it goes along with a bumper sticker I saw the other day when I was having serious put down thoughts. It read "Don't Believe Everything You Think", and I am sure it meant something completely different, but it smacked me in the face and made me realize that yeah, I cant believe everything I think about myself. OK, here's the link: www.campaignforrealbeauty.com you may need to copy and paste, but take the time to watch it, its only 1 minute long. It's the dove film called "Amy", and take a moment to start a conversation with your daughters, no matter how old they are. Be so careful with how you talk about yourselves, lets try to raise our daughters, and sons, in a world where they don't have to kill themselves to be beautiful. Lets teach our sons to respect women for true, real beauty not the distorted beauty facing them every way they turn, and how to truly know the difference...