This post was inspired partly by a very thought provoking piece I read on the weekend here.
I've always been happy with my facial appearance. My parents reinforced the message I was beautiful throughout my youth and my husband continues doing so today.
My weight however, is a very different story.
I was put on a diet when I was twelve and I got locked into a cycle that was incredibly self destructive.
It wasn't helped by one specific incident in my teenage years.
Retrospectively I was fine. I was fit, healthy and perfectly average. I was on the school swim team, the athletics team. You name it, I did it.
But I still remember being at a friends house for a sleepover and the next day the decision being made we should go hiking. All I had to wear was a floral dress I know, I know and these horrible flat heeled boots that were slippery. Everyone else was wearing jeans, runners and jumpers. Except me. My inability to dress appropriately for social events is a whole other blog post.
I remember slipping and clambering over rocks, growing hotter and hotter, and more and more flustered when the girl at whose house we'd been sleeping turned to me and said: "You remind me of Edith from Picnic at Hanging Rock." I think we'd just studied the movie at school.
For the record, Edith was the fat one. The flustered one. The one who struggled to join in.
I've never forgotten what she said.
She apologised, but the damage was done.
Is done.
It's strange how a throwaway remark like that sears your heart and soul isn't it?
I hope and pray I can protect my children from feeling like that, or specifically, being made to feel like that.
These days I'm confortable in my skin.
I have friends who are beautiful inside and out and I never feel like I am "lesser than" or more accurately, "more that!" them.
I'm never going to be thin.
I'll always struggle to have a healthy BMI though I work pretty hard on it.
I am always aiming to do great things with my body, like training to be a surf lifesaver.
Like running a half marathon.
But sometimes I have to work very hard to quell the inner chant
"Fat girl, you're the fat girl."
And I don't think I'm alone in that.