I wonder when it was that I learned to hate my body, to ridicule the cellulite and poke fun at the moles and freckles. When was it that I became so deeply dissatisfied with the external parts that comprise to make me?

Growing up in a family of fiercely independent women, women full if spunk and sass, women whom are brave and intelligent, I sometimes feel that I am letting them down with this ridiculous amount of self-loathing.

And then I remember the photograph of my mom in the family album. She stands grinning on the beach as she grips the hands of myself and my twin sister. Beside the photo, inscribed with her perfect penmanship it reads; thunder thighs. A perfect memory captured forever, dimmed by an ugly label.

I note the magnet on the refrigerator; ‘I’m not overweight, I’m under tall!’ A made up excuse to explain why my mom looks the way she does, and not like the women in the magazines.

Our mother’s forget that they are raising daughters who think that their mothers are the most beautiful women in the world. We think the moon and sun rises in their eyes. We long to be powerful and strong and brave and beautiful just like them.

Yet, they also teach us to look closely in the mirror at our fine lines. To note with horror the gray as it begins to shade our hair. They show us to base our self-worth on the number on the scale and the size of our jeans. They show us how to call our bigger sizes hanging in our closets our “fat pants” and to apologize when unexpected company arrives and our appearance is less than perfect.

I am surrounded by a clan of marvelously fabulous women, whom I gaze at in awe. They are fighters, these women of mine. They work hard to better themselves and to provide for their families. They have done things that others have told then they couldn’t, or shouldn’t.

To me this is their real beauty. A picture of a whole person, not one under the microscope, the pieces being picked apart.

Now it is time for me to look at myself with that same lens that I use to view them. That will be a challenge, for emblazoned in my mind is ‘thunder thighs’.

I need only to hear my daughter’s voice as she tells me that I’m pretty. For her I will believe it, and I will teach her that beauty is much more than our pieces.