It's been so easy to tell them how beautiful THEY are, because it's obvious. They are the thing beauty is made of. They are the reason we started worshiping beauty. They are milky and porcelain with dark eyes that see right through you. They sparkle and dance. When they're sleeping, they turn into soft cloud babies, little perfect tufts of white on the moonlight.
There are a lot of people like me. Women who know things. Women who have seen things. Women with diseases in their livers. There are a lot of women with scars on their arms and words that carry themselves like sparrows. There are women who were too big for this town, who had their backs bent carrying things like religion and a history that originated somewhere in the crook of a branch that extended over a stream. A place where a patch of the sky was visible through the leaves, where a little girl let her bare leg dangle too far down.
There are a lot of people like me, because we're all the same. We're all blood and electricity. We're lonely under the gaze of god. We're all wet with dew and swallowing hard against DO THIS, CONSUME, SHUT UP and BE AFRAID to die.
All of you women with lines on your brow, with cracks between your fingers... it's been a long winter. All of you, you are beautiful and so am I.
The thing is, my children are perfect. I am the grown up, so I'm supposed to show them everything about life. When they wake up in the morning, though, I stare at them and they're new. They teach me everything. They are babies and they teach me what it means to be a person. It's easy to see that they're beautiful.
I am slow and I am tired. I am round and sagging. I am harried. I am sexless. I am getting older.
I am beautiful. How can this be? How can any of this be true?
I don't want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that's what women do. That's what mommy did. I want them to become women who remember me modeling impossible beauty. Modeling beauty in the face of a mean world, a scary world, a world where we don't know what to make of ourselves.
"Look at me, girls!" I say to them. "Look at how beautiful I am. I feel really beautiful, today."
I see it behind their eyes, the calculating and impression. I see it behind their shining brown eyes, how glad they are that I believe I am beautiful. They love me. To them, I am love and guidance and warm, soft blankets and early mornings. They have never doubted how wonderful I am. They have never doubted my beauty. How confusing it must have been for them to see me furrowing my brow in the mirror and sucking in my stomach and sighing.
How confusing it must have been to have me say to them, "You think I am beautiful, but you are wrong. You are small and you love me, so you're not smart enough to know how unattractive I am. I know I am ugly because I see myself with mean eyes. You are my child and I love you, but I will not allow myself to be pretty, for you. No matter how shining you are when you watch me brushing my hair and pulling my dress over my head. No matter how much you want to be just like me, I can't be beautiful for you and I don't know why."
I am beautiful.
I am beautiful.
I am beautiful.
It's even been working, a little bit. I've even stopped hating myself, a little bit.
I'll be what they see. They see me through eyes of love. I'd do anything for them, even this.
I am beautiful.
Yes you are!
ReplyDeleteThis is breath taking...
Yes! Exactly. I feel like this makes so much sense and why is it not just common practice. Teach by example and stuff. You know?
ReplyDeleteLovely, you are beautiful. I am going to start telling myself this as well. Too often I focus on what I think is wrong, no more!
ReplyDeleteI just read this to my husband. We both agree--you're gorgeous. I'm going to start that with my kids, too. My daughter is fixated on the idea that SHE is beautiful, and while that's true, she needs to know it's not all she has. But she also needs to know she got at least half of that from her mama.
ReplyDeletexoxo
I loved reading this. It is revolutionary. Your daughters are so blessed to have you as their mother.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for being a strong mother and giving to your daughters in such a loving way.
Peace,
Morgan
I have so much love for this post!
ReplyDeleteI have a question. Do you work outside of the household at all?
ReplyDeleteI love the way your language slides from metaphor to realism back to metaphor again.
ReplyDeleteIn re comments: Who the hell is anonymous and what does it have to do with anything whether you work outside of the household at all?
I've been reading your blog for some time. Just trying to understand where you are coming from when dealing with the issues you struggle with.
ReplyDeleteWhat's your name or something I can call you?
ReplyDeleteI put my graduate degree on hold to be at home with my kids. I do currently work, only from home (or the library or coffee shop, wherever I can get away.) I have a permanent writing position for a news website. So, I do work and have an income and everything... it's just all from home.
I don't know what I'm going to do about my education/career plans when my girls get older. I was going to school for English and English Literature. What I really want to do is write. I will probably continue to write and navigate the publishing industry, hopefully becoming a published novelist at some point. At worst, I'll keep freelancing and writing for pay.
It's hard to picture myself getting dressed up in the morning and headed to a job, at this point. I kind of doubt that's ever what I'm going to do. Life is long, though, I guess. Who knows?
you are beautiful and you've inspired me to start telling my louise that she and i are both beautiful every day!
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog for awhile - you are amazing! This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. Thank you, thank you :)
ReplyDeleteI found your blog through The Beheld and this post. I cried after reading it. What am amazing insight! I come more and more to see that it's not what we say to our children that sinks in, but what we do. If I want my 2.5 yo to grow up thinking she's beautiful I need to model that behavior for her, same with exercise, reading, being polite, and all the other habits I want her to have.
ReplyDeleteThis obviously is an especially powerful one since it's so tied up with our feelings of self-worth.
Thank you for a wonderfully insightful post.
I cried, reading this. So beautifully, powerfully written - and my own beautiful mother has never been able to see her own worth. No matter how much we love her, she sees herself, as you say, "with mean eyes." She, who provided us with books and stories and songs and museum trips and sports and music lessons and art supplies (though we were very poor), believes herself a dull person, an unattractive woman, a poor mother. It's not really her fault. She comes from a difficult childhood, with a parent who was mentally ill before our society understood schizophrenia. Fear molded her, very early. I don't blame her, but I hurt for her. And I hurt because, as an adult, I have had to say to myself, that my mother is a wonderful person, but that I do not want to be like her. I do not want to be ugly in my own eyes, or worthless. It is hard, as a daughter, to not want to be like your mother, when you have had such a wonderful mother.
ReplyDeleteSo. This is a great gift you give your daughters. When I gained 25 or 30 lbs suddenly (all in a year) at the end of my 20s, I found myself beginning to speak my mother's words: I am fat. I am unattractive. I am not worthy of this man I am married to. Only when I had to face the reality of an adult body, changing, did I realize that my mother's negative self-image had impressed itself deeply upon me and molded me as her fear had molded her. It took at least a year before I could even start to come to terms with the weight, with the reality of what had happened (growing up!), with the line I would need to draw in the sand between me and my beautiful, wonderful mother, to say "I will not be like her."
I always swore I would grow old gracefully. That I would celebrate each scar and each wrinkle as the story of my life writ upon my body. I am working my way back to the goals that were so easy when I was young. I think your daughters will find life's seas a little easier with your model before them. Bless you!
Wow, I just found this post through "Already Pretty" and it instantly reminded me of a post I did a week ago about how mothers might damage their daughters self-esteem and body image, if they hate their OWN body. Great to see that an actual mother had almost the same thoughts that I had!
ReplyDeleteThank you. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered you. I think we may be soulmates.
ReplyDeleteI love this. I just wrote something along this line a couple weeks ago. My son said that one of his classmates told him that his mom was fat. I could tell he didn't know what to say, to me or to them. A teaching moment for sure.
ReplyDeleteyour post really hit home with me! You are beautiful and I am beautiful, we are beautiful and we are mama's! mama's who want our beautiful babies to know how important loving yourself is!!
ReplyDeleteI remember my mother walking around the house drumming on her stomach and chanting "fatty, fat, fat, fat. fatty fat fat fat."
ReplyDeleteAs an adult woman, I have inherited her shape, and oh how I wish she had walked around instead saying, look at my beautiful womanly belly. Look at my beautiful body, my beautiful shape.
Something we can start doing now, for ourselves, our children, and each other.
So brave! So beautiful! Things are hard, but you're doing a good job!
ReplyDeleteYou write THE TRUTH!
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU for writing this. It is beautiful and brilliant.
ReplyDeleteI found you through The Beheld, and just in time. My daughter is now one; my son three. And I've been sort of mulling over, in the back of my mind, how to address the idea of attractiveness with them when it comes up.
This is the first idea I've heard that makes sense.
When I was a kid, my mom did, ALWAYS, talk about and think about and act upon how "fat" she was. And it did have profound effects on me, on her, and on our relationship.
I always thought I just wouldn't talk about the shape or attractiveness of my body, any which way, with my kids.
But this is so much wiser.
I'll be reading your blog from now on.
This is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI have a son, and he may be my only child. Even not having a daughter though, I believe it is important to role model self-confidence for him. For him to see his Mother feel beautiful despite the world trying to beat her down and make her feel old, ugly, fat...
Role modeling is a powerful thing and I want him to see that we all, women and men can have power to love ourselves fully, no matter what shape we are.
That essay, my dear, was beautiful. and so are you, lucky kids.
ReplyDeletethat was beautiful. thank you. I will start doing this for my 2 girls.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your courage. That's what I felt when I read your blog. Courage. As women we need a lot of it!
ReplyDeleteAmanda, you speak deep truths! When I was younger and active in the women's movement, I learned to stop judging myself by society's standards, to look in the mirror and look right into my eyes, and tell myself all the beauty that was there in me. Now, as a woman of 59, I still see the beauty; it's there in ALL of us women :) Hugs, Pixie
ReplyDeleteBeautiful....
ReplyDeleteMY HEART
MY SOUL
touched
scorched by this truth <3
You are indeed a beautiful woman!
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to see my own beauty day to day, but when I look back at photos, say of ten years ago, you know, when I can get some distance, I can more easily see it. I imagine how I will feel, thirty years from now, looking back at a photo of myself today and I try to appreciate what I'll see then now!
Also I heard a line in a Bon Jovi song the other day that rang true "Like a favorite pair of torn blue jeans
This skin I'm in it's alright with me"
We are all full of beauty, and the more we look inside for it the more we'll feel it and it'll start to show.
Thanks for such a wonderful post.
You said this so wonderfully. You gave me a new way to think on it. I am 56, mom to many daughters birthed and given. Here is a link to a poem I wrote about daughters and beauty.
ReplyDeletehttp://wh0rem0ans.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=72#/d110u1w
i found this via pinterest- i don't do lj anymore but i just had to comment. remember me??
ReplyDeletethis is so lovely! your girls must be getting so big now- i remember when you were pregnant with scout. i had baby girl #3 in november and this post is just inspiring for a mom with 3 girls. thank you so much for sharing. thank you so much for being beautiful.
I remember you, sweet one. <3 I'm so glad you found me, here. And, another girl! How wonderful! Scouty is 6, now and Louisey is almost 3. It's funny how so much time goes by. I hope that you and your beautiful family are happy and safe and warm. :)
DeleteThank you! I love you, Amanda!
ReplyDelete