Remember: you’re enough, you deserve to be happy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/04/2021 (1795 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few weeks ago, I bought a bikini — a black, high-waisted two-piece with simple ruffles on the top and bottoms — online.

It looked cute on the “curvy plus” model and on the people who submitted photos of themselves wearing it on the website’s review section.

It was the unaltered photos of women of all different shapes and sizes, and their marvelling at how they looked and how good it made them feel, that convinced me to buy the suit.

My body has always been just right to wear a bikini to the beach– any body is. It took me a long time to realize and appreciate that.

Summer is coming, and I have every intention of spending as much time as I can on the beach making memories with my kids.

I’m not sure I’ve ever owned a bikini in my adult life. I’ve always wanted one.

I used to assure myself that someday, when my body was finally just right, I’d buy one. I would fantasize about that day, and I would hang on for dear life to the thought that when I was finally skinny enough, everything in my life would just be better, including my body in a bikini.

I have spent so much of my time waiting for that day that I’ve missed out on many experiences that continued to happen all around me. Life doesn’t stop, and you can’t get time back. It’s so stupid, and if I have regrets in life, waiting for “someday” is one them.

My body has always been just right to wear a bikini to the beach — any body is. It took me a long time to realize and appreciate that.

I am soft, and I take up space. Like everything, my shape is always changing, yet no matter how small I’ve ever been able to shrink my body, or how big it has stretched, parts of me remain the same. My thighs remain thick, just a different proportion of thickness, and my belly remains squishy and soft. Faded stretch marks are etched all over my body as though they are a map on my skin, earned by different passages in life.

I’ve written about this topic before, and I will write about it again and again, because I think it’s very important. We live in a society where we are constantly being told we are not enough if our bodies are too much. We are taught that people in bigger bodies are lazy, unhealthy and undeserving. These stereotypes cause harm that seeps into all aspects of a person’s life and sense of self.

Many of us spend years of our lives trying to shed that last five or 10, or however many pounds. If we can just hit that milestone, we will have made it. We will have reached our “someday.”

The reality is, the “someday” we are looking for is unattainable. There will always be another new “someday” and something else about ourselves and our bodies that society deems wrong.

We live in a society where we are constantly being told we are not enough if our bodies are too much.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t strive to be healthy or to even lose weight — what people do with their bodies is none of my business. I’m saying no matter where you are in your life or what you look like or how you feel, please know that you are enough and that you deserve to be happy. We all deserve to enjoy the life that is happening around us.

I’ll be at the beach every chance I get this summer, playing with my kids in the water and eating Old Dutch chips under the shade of our beach tent.

Life is short, and so is summer in Manitoba. Hopefully, I’ll see you there.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyACook