Photograph

Today I am cheating. I am not writing the post which I am supposed to because I have chickened out. Several people have praised me for my honesty and my bravery before when it comes to writing this blog, but some stories are not meant to be shared indiscriminately with the world, or at least not yet. I may come back to the post I started writing, but I have been inspired to write this one instead. Hey, it’s my blog and I can break the rules if I want to!

Today I went shopping for jeans. This was desperately needed as both my pairs (yes that is how extensive my wardrobe is) had totally split, and not in a cool, distressed, kind of way, but in a thighs just desperate to get free kind of way!

I went to a large, well known chain, to a massive out of town store to give myself the best start. Being a size 18 and a hair’s breath under six foot tall (most of which comes from my legs) buying trousers is not my favourite enterprise. Now this store literally (I checked) did not have a single pair of trousers in an 18long. In fact, I only managed to find two pairs of trousers in long at all! Way to not make you loyal customer feel like a freak!

I did eventually manage to find a pair in another store, but I literally have to go with ‘pair that I can do up which reach my feet’ rather than any sartorial statement.

Buying trousers has been the bane of my life for years and don’t even get me started on shoes. I have been known to cry big, hot tears in shoe shops when I couldn’t find a single pair to fit, let alone any beautiful ones that I liked. And don’t get me started on the trauma that is trying to buy make-up from the beautifully perfected sales assistants on make-up counters. Again both palpitations and tears have been shed over the very idea of it.

So I would not describe myself as body confident. I do not have much in the way of love for this poor vessel of mine.

But I am not about to tell my children that. I am going to tell my children how amazing my body is for growing them. I am going to laugh when they say I have a fat belly and show them how much I can get it to wobble when I shake it. I will talk to them about how foods nourish our bodies and making positive food choices, but I will never say that I am on a diet or that any particular food will make you fat. And I am absolutely not going to hide myself in photos. I am not going to delete the unflattering ones. I am not going to deny my children the chance to look back once they’re older, and see me playing with them. I won’t be posting make-up free selfies for charity, because make-up free is just my face, the vast majority of the time, and I’m ok with that. I am happy for them to see me the way I look and to always remember the way I really look, because I look like their mother, the woman who loves them most in the entire world and that is somebody who is worth looking at!