I’ve done a lot of looking into mirrors in my life. Some of it primping, getting ready to go out. Eyebrow plucking, makeup, hair, outfit, I’ve put in some hours. And that’s just the practical mirror time.
Then there’s the other hours. The hours spent trying to figure out who that person looking back at me is. Not liking what I see. Judging and shaming the face, the hair, the body and wondering how it could ever be fixed.
That’s been the bulk of my mirror time.
Which is why the event I am about to describe is so extraordinary.
A few days ago, I was walking by the mirror on my way to make a video in my garden. I caught a glimpse of myself and thought, “Oh my goodness, who is that beautiful woman staring back at me?”
When I was much younger, I didn’t feel pretty. Not as a little girl, a young woman or, really, for the first 34 years of my life. And it wasn’t just that I didn’t feel beautiful, which I didn’t. I hated myself. I hated the way I looked. I was overweight and unhappy and I stayed that way for thirty-four years.
It didn’t help that my mother and grandmother were always commenting on my weight, saying things like, “You would be so pretty if you just lost twenty pounds.”
Being overweight was one way that my feelings about myself showed on the outside. The other was in my romantic relationships. I fantasized about the kind of man I wanted, the kind of man I thought I deserved, but I down deep, I didn’t believe that man would want me.
Because I didn’t feel attractive, I wound up settling for a man who wasn’t handsome by any stretch of the imagination. At least he was funny and creative, and I told myself that was enough for me.
It turned out that he was also a pathological liar. Even though I knew things weren’t good, I married him and wound up investing a total of thirteen years of my life in that relationship.
When I came out of my first marriage, I had a stunning realization. I knew I had to look at why, out of all the men on the planet, I had picked my ex and why I had chosen to stay with him for thirteen years.
No one forced me to do these things. They were my choices and, now, I had the opportunity to choose differently. I was determined to get it right this time.
I knew there were no quick diets or Band-Aid fixes that would solve my problems. It was time to do the deeper work to learn to love and accept myself.
The most important choice I ever made was to face my weight issue head-on. I was smart enough to know that no diet would solve this problem for me. I’d taken weight off many times only to put more weight back on. And even when I was thinner, I still didn’t like myself.
I knew that “it wasn’t what I was eating, it was what was eating me” that mattered…and, this time, I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
To do that, I sought out the greatest mentors and teachers I could find. I studied with the author of The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz. I got my Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology at a fabulous alternative university in Santa Monica, CA. And I joined a very strict 12-Step group for compulsive eating.
In doing this work, it became clear to me how I had been hiding behind my weight and compromising myself my entire life.
I spent the next six years working on me before I felt that I was ready to find my true partner. By the time I started to date, I didn’t just feel like a new woman, I was a new woman.
Now, when I look at my handsome, kind, loving husband of eighteen years, I know that I would never have been able to receive his love if I hadn’t done this work on myself.
Benjamin tells me all the time that I am the most beautiful woman he knows and that I turn him on more than anyone ever has. Every time we dress to go out (before the pandemic, that is), he always comments on how pretty I look.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have believed it if a man said these things to me, but now I do.
You see, Benjamin is my mirror.
The me that I see reflected back to me in his eyes is who I now believe myself to be. And the more he reflects back to me who I am, the more of myself I become.
That is how I have come to embrace my own beauty and to love the woman I see in the mirror today.
Feeling seen and loved by my husband who I respect and adore with every cell in my being has given me the confidence not only to embrace my own beauty but to let it shine from the inside out for all the world to see.
All my life I longed for anyone to tell me I was beautiful. My mother didn’t do that for me. My grandmother didn’t do that for me. And my father certainly didn’t do that for me.
It takes more than a diet or a self-help book or saying affirmations in the mirror to become a woman who can attract The Guardian of Your Soul. It takes personal responsibility and deep personal work.
But once you do this work on yourself, you will be ready attract and receive the love of an AMAZING man. I can tell you from personal experience, it’s the most empowering and freeing thing you could ever do!
The hitch is that it is really hard to do this work on your own. I certainly didn’t. I needed the help of great teachers to get to where I am today.
If you are ready to make some real and lasting changes and finally draw the right man into your life, my free 45-minute webinar is a great place to start.
If you like what you hear in it, book a call with me and let me tell you how to get on the other side of this and into the arms of your soulmate.
Your in Nakedness,
