“Girl, stop glorifying and praising your past self just for being skinnier. ‘Comparison is the thief of joy.’ As women, we have learned to tell ourselves that little mantra when we start comparing ourselves to other bodies on the daily.
Yet at the end of the decade last year, I watched more than a few of my friends and even celebs forget this and start comparing and commenting negatively on how they look now versus what they looked like 10 years ago when they did the decade challenge.
This is my super early reminder for you. Comparison can still be the thief of joy, even when you are using your past/current self as the measuring stick. Maybe you are happy about where you are now and maybe you aren’t. Either way, any ‘version’ of you wasn’t or isn’t LESS THAN.
I am seeing far too many girls develop full-on eating disorders and we wonder why. We spend our casual conversations, time reflecting on our memories, our public social media posts, and our deep, dark thoughts, beating ourselves up over our weight. And then wonder how anyone watching this play out could ever ‘go too far.’
The messaging of acceptable and public self-hate at a certain weight is being pushed out on the daily on social media and it’s so hard to see! I fear for a time where my daughter would choose to comment only on her WEIGHT in her joyful photos more than the beautiful places she’s been and the people she loves who are beside her in them.
Please don’t get it twisted. I know growth is good. I know implementing healthy changes is good. I know healing from bad habits is so good. But it’s not healthy to develop a pattern of hating who you are or who you were. People preach a lot about the importance of self-love for your current self and ignore the elephant in the room of healing a past of self-hate. Let’s clear it up now, self-hate is not a healthy way to motivate yourself or reflect on your life.
Maybe your waistline grew this past decade (GUILTY, FRIEND) but so did your family, your friend circle, and your passion and JOY for living an extraordinary life (also, gratefully guilty). That’s worth celebrating. Don’t minimize the beautiful decade of life you’ve lived by longing for your smaller body.
Maybe you hit amazing weight loss goals over the past decade and are over the moon with your hard work and the things you’ve pushed your body to do! That’s totally worth celebrating too! However, you still shouldn’t think any less of the girl you were when you weighed more. She lived an awesome life too and still deserves love and to be looked back on fondly.
If you compared yourself at the start of this past decade and didn’t feel happy about one of the versions of yourself in the photos, I hope you look to be kinder to yourself in this new decade. My prayer is you wake up every day not looking to just have a great ‘after’ picture in 2030, but ready to treat yourself with kindness so you can celebrate both versions of you when you compare photos.
Here’s to a a commitment to remembering our former selves and our memories with joy, being grateful we are still breathing, and just putting a stop to being so dang hard on ourselves. Let’s be encouraged that every version of ourselves is WORTHY OF LOVE, no matter what we look like or weigh.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Courtney Abernathy. Follow her journey on Instagram here. Do you have a similar experience? We’d like to hear your important journey. Submit your own story here. Be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube for our best videos.
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