metrorun It’s taken me years to gain acceptance of myself. And acceptance has built for me in pieces. I’ve never been “ok” with my curly hair. As a kid, my parents couldn’t get a comb through it and of course it hurt for them to try, so I screamed and yelled and so, they insisted that I cut it off. I did. As I got older I then carried a trauma around my hair – trauma from it’s being different and then trauma with having it cut. Short, medium, long, it didn’t matter, I just didn’t like my hair. It was not “ok.” I would straighten it and have it shorn almost to my scalp – to remove all trace of curl. I was working around my hair, not with it. It took me until my early 40’s before I gained peace with my hair. Finally I accepted my hair when I was taught to care for it “like a fine piece of cloth.”
And my nose. I’ve struggled with my crooked nose. I have a deviated septum. No one has been able to tell me how nor when it got that way or if I have had it from birth. I even paid a lot of money for a surgery that did not “fix” it. The doctor tried to convince me to get another surgery to really “fix” it. I declined. The only two people who ever said anything about it were me and the daughter of a co-worker who stood well beneath me. She looked up at me, and the way kids do, asked “why is your nose crooked?” Her mother gasped and was about to scold her, but I giggled and told her, playing with the tip of it to bring it back into centerline.
I’ve also struggled with accepting my short muscular build, always wanting the lithe body of a tall dancer. I loved playing sports and did gymnastics as a kid, so my athletic tendencies didn’t help. Instead of backing off the sports, I claimed I was robbed of height because my mother must have smoked, drank and consumed lots of caffeine while pregnant with me, thereby stunting my growth. My rebellion against my body caused a faulty body image that showed up as eating disorders through my teens and early 20’s.
My point is that I may be a certain way and not ok with it, but I’m ok with my reality of who I am without those things. Slowly over time through much seeking, inquiry, talking, reading, meditating, I come closer and closer to acceptance of all of those things that I do not like. I still can’t love those parts, but I have come to be at peace with them. #okwithnotbeingok
