Sun, Sand, Mexico, and Body Image

So this post may be short and sweet, as I just got back from vacation and am so swamped with work and life, after taking 5 days off from being a grown up. Mexico was incredible. It was warm and so beautiful. Everyone we met was so nice. I literally would not change 1 thing about our vacation. That was how great it was. I’m planning a post all about all the things we did, and all the fun we had, complete with pictures, but today there is something else that is on my mind.

Roommate posted all the pictures from the trip today on Facebook. I knew this was happening. Roommate does this with every trip we go on. Really with everything that we do: BBQ’s, parties, nights on the town, all make their way into albums for 300-500 of our closest acquaintances to look at. 2 years ago, I liked pretty much none of the photos. 1 year ago I thought some of them were okay. But lately I’ve actually enjoyed that roommate documents every little thing we do. I like most of the pictures and I’m so glad we have such a great record of all of the stuff we do; for the same reason I’m writing this blog, I want a tangible record of life as it flies past me.

But this vacation was all swimsuits, all the time. And I hadn’t stuck to my old tankini stand by. This was a bikini vacation. I knew roommate would post the pictures and today I got that notification that she had posted pictures. I knew they were vacation photos. Vacation photos that I hadn’t looked at since I took them. I felt good while we were there and wasn’t ashamed to walk across the pool deck without a cover up, or lay next to roommate on a lounger. But that isn’t a photo on the internet. I went and clicked through all 70 photos that she posted.  And I was SO proud.

I am not perfect. I know I still have parts of myself that I’m working on, both inside and out. But I have come SO far and worked so hard and in the moment when I saw those photos, I actually saw the person that other people see, and not that chubby girl that I used to be. So please excuse the tiny bit of self-congratulations, but I just wanted to take a minute to recognize that there are pictures of me, on the internet, in a bikini, and I do not want to die. I do not want to un-tag, I do not mind that they are on my news feed. I have worked hard, I continue to work hard. I’m proud I was able to send myself on a tropical vacation and I am proud of the beautiful women I see in our photos.

People can tell you that you are beautiful all day, but until you believe it for yourself, it has little worth. For me, those words have never been truer than they are today.