You can’t pour from an empty cup!

There are things you should know about me. I used to list it like this: wife, mother, daughter, designer. But now, if I am being honest, the list would be something like this: believer, wife, mother, daughter, friend, designer, artist, writer, registered nurse, ADHD, bulimic (in remission), introverted extrovert, female freedoms fighter, homesteader, adopted and woman still adding to this list. The first list is perfectly acceptable. The second list holds everything I am most proud of and most ashamed of. The first list would never be questioned or looked down on, it is socially acceptable and tells an accurate story. The second one, however, is the most true. It is raw, vulnerable, and probably makes a few of you uncomfortable to read. But every bit of that list is who I am, what makes me tick, and how I move through this incredible journey called life.

I challenge you to make the same two lists. Your first list being the socially acceptable facts that you would tell anyone. The second list being all the things in your life that have made an impact on you. The things that you have fought and won or lost or are still fighting. My relationship to my body is directly affected by my journey with bulimia. That experience directly affects how I teach my girls about their bodies and how I now talk about my body. My children have never heard me use the word fat in reference to appearance of myself or anyone else. They have never heard me complain about how I look in clothes or judge appearance based on what I see in the mirror or on the scale. In fact, they have only ever heard body positive comments or ideas come out of my mouth.

That is how my journey with bulimia made me a better mom. Out of one of my darkest shames, came one of the things I am most proud. My children know nothing but body positivity in our household. I own my journey.  I challenge you to examine those lists and the differences between them. What you added in the second list may be unconsciously driving your decisions or aversions. Identifying these things will benefit both us and the generation we are trying to impact.

Why do  you need to know, or why is this all relevant? Well, we are all people trying to connect. Lots of people can identify with the first list I made but there is nothing really connecting about it. The second list, however, people can draw an immediate connection to. And no, Im not proud of every single thing on that list. But it is part of me and I love me now. If you connect with any part of that list, congratulations on taking steps to embrace yourself. Before we can start working on the next generation, we have to take a step back and reconcile who we are and learn to embrace it. So going back to my first post, “You make time for what is important to you,” and expanding on that, ” You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

You can’t pass on knowledge you don’t have. You have to be comfortable with yourself in order to explore and experiment with yourself. If you aren’t there yet, that’s OK! Here I am, standing in front of all of you, saying this is me! I am comfortable with who I am, and I am ready to take one for the team in trying all of the new things out there! So even if you aren’t quite comfortable yet with all of you, we can get a jump start together on the knowledge end. Let’s tackle puberty, life, and all things female from a clean/nontoxic angle. (clean and nontoxic in every sense of the word.) Until you are ready, I will dive in and get my hands dirty (probably not just metaphorically) on this crazy, beautiful experience re-imagining life.  Let’s fill those cups together!