Loving yourself through changes

Loving yourself is never a one-and-done deal.

There is always more of you  to love.

 Why?
 Because who you are today is different to who you were yesterday.. or last week or last month... or five years ago.

Change is the only constant.

Our beliefs change. we learn new things and things that we believed years ago, we now realize don't hold true for us any more.

Our relationships change. People who were our best friends for a long time we no longer see any more because we grew apart. Or the person that we married and thought was the love of our life we now realize was just a temporary stop on our journey through love.

Our body changes. We gain weight or we lose weight. Our body ages and we now have trouble with our hearing or our eye sight or our body just feels different than it used to.

And so we have to fall in love with our self... over and over again. Just like we do with our significant other.

I discovered this for myself recently. I am currently losing weight without even trying. Let me back up for a minute and say that I was always skinny growing up. My mother was always trying to convince me to eat and I was a picky, picky eater ( and as all mother's do she cursed me by saying " I hope you have a child as fussy as you when you grow up". Thanks Mum, I did, with bells on!). I was alsop teased unmercifully by adults and children alike. 

I was told not to stand side on or I might disappear altogether, that I was lucky my legs didn't snap and run up my arse ( who says that to someone?), that I should be careful in the wind in case I got blown away. That is just the adults. This kids just called me "stork legs"

I stayed skinny until I turned thirty although I was always terrified of becoming fat and obsessed over my weight.

Then came the perfect storm: I got pregnant to the man I was divorcing, I gave birth, got a tubal ligation, turned thirty and met the man of my dreams ... and his four girls. Not only did my hair start falling out in handfuls - so much that my hairdresser asked what to do about my bald patches but the weight ( which had all dropped off dramatically after the birth) all started piling on... and on ... and on.

I took a long time adjusting the image I had of myself to the image that was now in front of me. In my mind I was still slim. I tried eating differently. I tried exercising nothing changed.

It took me a long time to get comfortable and love my new body.

Over the past few years I have fallen deeply in love with my curvy body. I  called myself voluptuous. I claimed myself as a Sex Goddess. I wrote a book  and I shifted my mindset about what my body meant to me.

For the past couple of years I have been doing self love challenges and I am currently running Nurturing November ( a free email course. Sign up here ) and now the weight is falling off.

Yes, I changed my eating habits but not drastically. I am following the Paleo lifestyle ( I loathe to call it a diet becasue it doesn't feel like a diet at all) but not stringently. I have increased the amount of physical activity I'm doing because I have more energy although I wouldn't call it exercising ( that's in the plan though!)

But here's the thing my body is shedding the excess pounds which is great but I am also adjusting to the new slimmer me again. My clothes are getting lose and baggy. I have already gone down one size and these are now loose on me too.

As the pounds are dropping off I am learning to love myself in a new way. The stretch marks are becoming deeper and more noticeable now they are not stretched over fat, my breasts are not as plump and round as they once were. Not only is my body losing weight but,of course, I am older than I was when I was last slim so everything is different.

Oh and menopause is definitely on the horizon. Fun times.

The biggest thing I am learning ( relearning, reminding myself, noticing) is that my body really is only a very small part of who I am  and the Me that I have to love is the one who lies inside all of that. So I am loving myself a little more every day.


So here are my five tips to loving yourself through change:

(1) Change is inevitable.
 Accept that change is going to happen. If you keep struggling to keep things the same you are going to miss out on all the fun.

(2) Get comfortable with the new "normal" 
Once you accept that change is happening embrace it. All change feels uncomfortable at first but struggling with it, resisting it will only make the transition last longer and feel miserable in the process.

(3) Be gentle with yourself.
Some days everything will feel fine and others you will struggle with. It is all okay. Beating yourself up for having a bad day won't help. Taking a warm bath and going to bed early might be just the thing you need. Gentle, gentle.

(4) Look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say "I love you"
Keep reminding yourself how much you love you. Even on the days you feel like crap. Especially on the days you feel like crap. Do something you love. Treat yourself like your own best friend.

(5) Celebrate!
Take the time to acknowledge how far you have come . Every small step in the direction you want to go is a huge victory so take the time to celebrate. And keep going!

Turning up the heat

We all want to be thought of as being good in bed.

We want to think that we leave our partner satisfied and happy and with thoughts of only us dancing around in their heads for hours afterwards.

We like to think that they will have a sly smile on their face the next day whenever thoughts of us drift across their mind, which will happen often because the sex we had was just that good.

The trouble is, as women, we keep looking outside of ourselves for that magic solution on how to drive a man crazy in bed or make ourselves desirable.

We think it comes down to the right boob size. It doesn't.

Or the right dress size. Again it doesn't, in fact I dare you to ask your partner your dress size. I bet he doesn't have a clue.

Or we think it comes down to how much we weigh. Nah - wrong again.

Or whether we have cellulite on our thighs, or stretch marks,  or whether we have the right hairstyle, or , or, or. Our list of things that could be wrong with us is long and we think if we just fix that  then men will want us, desire us.

Then we think is we just do this or that then he will keep coming back for more.

We forget that we are enough.

I just watched a promo for a new program this woman has created that will have men flocking to you, enable you to unlock their deepest desires and become their all time fantasy woman and it's yours for the small price of $47 USD but you better hurry because she should really sell it for $297. This program will have men adoring you and begging to be your man and while it wasn't sleazy it is still focused on him and all you can do to help drive him wild.

At the same time I got an email from another person that I follow telling you ways to make you feel more like a Goddess all of which I already knew and wrote about in my book "The Goddess Guide to Sex, Love and Life" .

I know which one I am more interested in... and I hope you are too.

Becoming our most vibrant, sexual, sensual selves will bring about the most amazing change in our sex lives while at the same time making us happy and content within ourselves, boosting our confidence and all while taking the best care of ourselves .

Nothing is more potent and alluring to men than a woman who is completely at home in her own body. A woman who revels in her sexuality and isn't scared of embodying her inner goddess is a woman who will be adored but more than that she will enable her man to open fully into his own expression of his sexuality.

This isn't just a theory that I hold it is what has happened in my own relationship. We are not some hot, young couple just starting out on our journey together. No, we are a middle aged couple who have been together for the past 22 years and our relationship hasn't always been this way.

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In fact it has only been in the past 8 years that things have really begun to get hotter and steamier, right when the media would have you believe everything should be heading in the opposite direction. It wasn't until I changed that things took a turn for the better. One day I decided that it was time for me to embrace who I truly am and start living as a full expression of my authentic self and so I declared myself to be a sex Goddess and with that everything shifted.

Since then I have been writing and talking about self love, sexuality and being a goddess. Most importantly I finally published my book  in which I give women tips and exercises to do to help them become their most sensual selves.

One of the most heart opening aspects of all this has been that my husband has been able to shed years of guilt, shame and fully open into the gorgeous, sexy, loving man that was buried beneath all of that old shit. And none of that came about because I was focusing on him like all the articles suggest you do. No, it came about because I opened up to myself, just like Marianne Williamson says in her famous poem " And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”


So where are you going to look? Outwards or inwards?