Until I shed the weight

I open the drawer that holds my bathing suits and immediately feel dread. "None of these are going to fit me right now," I say out loud to no one but myself. I have a beach day planned with the kids and we're about to leave. The towels and sunscreen are packed, the cooler is full, and all I need to do is get dressed. But standing in my room staring at my naked body, much softer than it was when I bought these suits 9 months and 10 pounds ago, every ounce of the excitement I had for today is gone. I'm no longer focused on having fun with the kids; I'm angry at myself for the thicker thighs and softer belly now exposed in the spotlight that is an ill-fitting two piece.

So I reach under my bed for the box of one-piece suits a size larger and put one on with a sigh, and then turn to the closet, pass over my shorts, and grab a flowy dress to hide myself under. Turning back to the mirror, I make my best attempt at a pep talk, "Forget about your body. Go to the beach, have fun with your kids, make today a good one. And for God's sake, get your self back to the gym tomorrow and out of this rut. Shed this weight and make yourself good again".

That last part, shed the weight, make yourself good is what has driven every fitness goal and every diet in my life.

I've motivated myself to run and lift weights with a promise of worthiness and beauty waiting on the other side of weight loss and abs. I know I'm not alone in this struggle but I cringe admitting it and wish it wasn't true.

I've convinced myself that until I shed the weight, I won't find love again.

Until I shed the weight, I can't wear what I want to wear. Until I shed the weight, other people will judge me. Until I shed the weight, my humanity is somehow less. It's an exhausting and unfulfilled life living in the space of until.

When we get to the beach, knowing my daughter is taking cues from me on how a woman should move through the world, I shed my dress with a fraudulent mask of confidence. One I've mastered to cover the self deprecating thoughts swirling in my head. But what is a life lived if the life within holds conditions to its worth? What is the alternative to waiting for the body to change before the heart feels free?

I know why the caged woman screams.

Our self-built cages filled with questions that feel impossible to answer because those answers lie in bearing ourselves boldly to the world. But that kind of bold vulnerability isn't optional--it's the cost of admission to a life lived free and unencumbered by the weight of unworthiness. Because if I'm really honest about the weight I need to shed, it's not about my physical body at all. It's the weight I carry deep in the corridors of my mind. I sift through the perceived opinions and judgements of others, weighing words, measuring exchanges, allowing the weight of perception to hang heavy on the scales of my worth in this world. And isn't that the ache of so many of us? The weight we refuse to shed? We turn over conversations like worn stones in our pockets, retelling the stories with an eye toward critique instead of a heart toward grace.

And if there's an exercise for the soul that’s forever worth the effort of shedding weight we were never designed to carry, it's learning — slowly, gently — to loosen the grip on others' perceptions.

To trade the heavy chain of self-judgment for the lighter yoke of truth. Because until we shed THAT weight, our life will never be lived in the truth of who we are.

And the truest of things for me is that I am loved no matter what and I live a life steeped in beauty and drenched in grace. A truth that is constant, even in the moments it is forgotten. So a reframing of until I shed the weight is the space I'm living in now, no longer tying that statement to the physical body that has proven herself strong time and time again, but to the soul of the woman begging to be released, longing to be free.

So I keep showing up, learning and unlearning, watching blood flow back into my knuckles as my grip on perception loosens and I feel more at home in the sunkissed rooms of the present moment than the dark corridors of my mind, closing the door for good on those impossibly heavy words, until I shed the weight.