Dear Daughter, Do as I say and not as I do.

Dear Daughter,

I can see you watching me.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, after your MMA class is done, you sit out of the way and you wait with your brothers for your dad and I to finish our Kickboxing class.

When we started, I had a very romanticized version in my head of what this would look like.  Not only would we be instilling the importance of physical activity in you as a child, you would be able to see it lived out in our lives, too!  Not just do as we say but do as we do!  Parenting win!

And then yesterday, as I was looking dishearteningly in the huge mirrors during class, adjusting my pants, I caught your eyes.

Your eyes were on me.

And you weren’t seeing me confidently rocking roundhouse kicks or sprints or push ups.

You were seeing me try and adjust my clothes so that roll of fat at my belly wouldn’t show so much.

After class in the change room, your question was hard for me to hear.

“Mom, why are you always looking in the mirror in class?”

Let me tell you the truth, my love.

It’s because I need you to do as I say, not as I do.

I feel like I am failing the battle of self-confidence in my head every single day.  Instead of standing in defiance of fitspiration and thinspiration, of ‘motivational’ shaming and the world where the pretty thin girl is always the one in the romance movie to get the boy, I cave.

My heart, deep down, can’t shake that you-don’t-look-good-enough-to-do-this attitude.

My head, it tells me I don’t look good enough to be wearing the work out clothes I’m in.

It tells me the other girls in the class all have flat stomachs, and that’s my personal failure.

It tells me only thinner and fitter girls, girls ‘prettier’ than me, can do things like Jiu Jitsu. Because for them, even in any position, there will be no fat rolls to grab or to fall out of the top of their GI pants when they slide down.

It hold me back and cuts me down, it makes me want to skip a workout so no one can see that fat or the jiggle or that inability to complete an unassisted floor to standing sit up. Because in my narcissistic world all eyes are judging me.

It shames my attempts as not good enough and reminds me of what I can’t do and how I don’t look, instead of what I can do.

And daughter, I am going to do absolutely everything in my power to ensure that you don’t end up like me.

Right now, you don’t care a single thing about what you look like.

When you roll on the mat with the boys in your MMA class, you aren’t the least bit concerned of love handles, flabby arms or soft anything.

And you’re a better athlete for it by far.

There’s little I won’t do to protect that.

When you get older, if you have the opportunity to travel somewhere warm, I will fight to protect the part of you that will not feel that she has to do A SINGLE THING to rock that swimsuit.

If you want to work out extra hard, you will because you want to achieve that faster time, that longer distance, that quicker take-down.

And if you want to make healthier food choices, you will because you want to live longer, to feel better, to build immunity or health or endurance.

And I pray it won’t be because you feel like a vacation will somehow magically be better if you look a certain way on the beach, or because graduation will be more memorable if you fit into a smaller dress, because you’re legs are too skinny or your stomach is not flat or because someone somewhere told you that you need to.

I KNOW that my attitude about myself is wrong, unhealthy is all-around stupid. (And also, I know that your teachers told you stupid is a bad word, and I am sorry.)

But I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by a world that tells me I need to look good enough to feel good enough.  And that’s my fault, because I am a stronger person than that, and I know the One who made me and I know when I hate the way I look it grieves His heart.  And I wish more than anything I could somehow find out when I allowed myself to be taught that fitness is visible and happiness is based on appearance, and stop it before it began.

My greatest prayer for you some days as I watch your glee as you try and beat your time running laps in the house, or try to do just one more push up, or when you wear yellow stripes with orange floral, is that you will become stronger than me in more ways than one.

I will work harder to do all I can to ensure you never see me tear myself down.


But I also want you to know that the attitude I have is so very, very hard to unlearn. And it won’t be taught only from me, though I am the only one I can control.   And that is why, my most loved daughter, I will do all I can to ensure that instead you learn your immense and intricate value before the world and it’s lessons have time to weld their way onto your heart.

When I told you I look in the mirror in class because I am sometimes embarrassed about how I look, you responded with


“But mommy, everyone is supposed to be sweaty!”

If I teach you little else in this life, my daughter, I pray you always remember that attitude. 

You are beautiful because you are you, my love,

Mom

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