#BeYou

This is a difficult post to write, firstly because I hate admitting that I'm not a perfect person. If you're reading this thinking, "No Caroline, there's already enough sad panda, interwebz drama happening please don't make us sit through this." Hear me out!

I'm not a perfect Mom no matter how hard I try.

I most certainly don't have a perfect body. This is something I struggle with every day of my life.

I'm never all the way calm, cool, and collected but I'm excellent at faking it.

I get angry and stressed out super easily, but I've come A LONG way.

I'm selfish, and sometimes because of that I can be pretty mean even to people who love me.

I can list for you, all of these things I'm not but that doesn't tell you who I really am. I took that picture at the lake yesterday, partly in jest, because that huge white space where my one piece would easily conceal some of my imperfections wouldn't tell you the story of why this is my happy place. Why this is my body's happy place! Yes, it'a a lake house. Yes, I love to swim, and share it with Hunter. Yes, I automatically revert back to age 8 when I go there expecting my great-grandmother to come around the corner at any second and hug me with her skinny, wrinkly arms and where I mouth song lyrics to my Aunt as we do silly dances in plastic deck chairs.

In this place, in my safe space this is where I came to be who I was. I could sing along to the radio on the screen porch, or sit out listening to my family yammer on about old stories. I put on plays in the living room, and hid in the bathroom from the boy who I had a crush on when I was 5. I spent Christmases in that house, looking out across an empty lake bottom as lights twinkled in the distance. It was the most beautiful, precious untouched place where I truly felt in every way total freedom. I tanned. I swam. I ate. I grew. I did everything that I was supposed to and I was exactly who I was without question.

I come back now to relive a little. It also makes me aware that in this place where no judgement was passed, and where little could be done about the weather in which case we wore less clothes. I owe everything that I like about myself to this place, but I don't give it back. I owe myself the courage, and the generosity, to be nicer to myself. I'm not like so many things that I wish I was! However, what I am is a body, and a vehicle, for all my hopes and dreams which I can't achieve if I'm always afraid of what the world if going to think about the way I look. Skin is just merely armor, it doesn't tell the whole story and it certainty doesn't tell your story.

A two piece bathing suit was a start of a whole different journey, but we all owe it to ourselves to be kinder to ourselves. Just be kind. Be yourself, and love yourself just like you would love someone else. Also, I love my tattoo. I think I'm ready for another one.

Until then,  soak up the rest of that Summer sun in whatever you feel comfortable in.

xo,

Caroline