This doesn’t look good on me.

Insecurities reside in most people, myself included. Letting them consume you will only lead to low self-esteem, a lack of confidence, and negative patterned thinking for future generations to endure. I am guilty. It takes hard work to overcome something so engrained, something so conditioned.

Over the weekend I went to Kohl’s to search for a summer dress. While in the fitting room, I heard two different women discussing with their family members the outfits they were trying on.

One customer was a young woman speaking to her mother. “I don’t think these are going to work. The reason I don’t own short dresses or shorts is because I have the ugliest knees. They’re hideous and I hate them.”

The other gal was a mother talking to her two young children. “Does this make me look fat? I still need to lose about 20 pounds before anything will look good. This looks awful.” The young children trying to make their mother feel better about her appearance.

Society conditions us to think that we aren’t perfect the way we are. That we have to live up to the very unattainable super model status or we aren’t worthy. Buy more products and chemicals to make up for what you lack, spend insane amounts of money on treatments, spend your paycheck buying the latest trend, the harassment infiltrates our brains more commonly than not.

What are we teaching our children? To not love themselves for who and what they are? Who are we raising?

Hello. YOU are perfectly imperfect. Find beauty in freckles, birth marks, acne, you name it. If we can raise each other up instead of putting people down, the world would be a far better place.

It takes courage to be fully comfortable in your own skin.

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” You are amazing. Breathe that in for a second.

Brittany Nikkole Thomas

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We are all interconnected by a little thing called LIFE.

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