Dear Angela,

This note is to remind you, the next time you are looking at your body and not liking it very much, just exactly why your body is amazing.

First of all, go look at that photo of you from last summer, looking smoking hot in your bikini. Go, now. It's ok, I'll wait.

Good.

Now, think of all the things your body is capable of doing. It can swim. It can sing. It can snuggle, both cats, and people. It can make yarn out of fiber, and then make stuff out of the yarn. It can dance.

Next, when the Buts start (but I used to be able to do the splits, but I can't walk in high heels, but I'm fat, but I used to be able to deadlift 125 lbs.), remind yourself of a few things.

1. If you really want to be able to do the splits, stretch more. That's how you got there the first time. Flexibility takes just as much work and practice as learning to spin, or rhumba, and you can do both of those things. Also, why, exactly, do you want to be able to do the splits?!
2. You can sit (and do other things) very well in high heels. Why the hell does it matter if you can walk in them?
3. Yes, you're fat. So? You're also healthy, which, really, is far more important. "Fat" is just a descriptor, like blue-eyed, or big-boobed. It's not a value judgement, and it says nothing about your character.
4. This week alone, you lifted somewhere around 6000 pounds of boxes at work, 3700 of those in one day. That means you lifted about 300 boxes at 20 pounds each. You lifted them from over your head down to the floor, and vice versa. You hauled pallets around. You pulled around a pump truck. Maybe you could deadlift 125 pounds again right now. Maybe you couldn't. You haven't tried lately, so cut it out with being stuck in the past.

Telling yourself that you have no value because you don't like the way your clothing fits, or because things are saggy, or wrinkled, or whatever, is not useful. Your worth is not based on what you see in the mirror. You certainly don't base the value of anyone else in your life on they way they look, why are you doing it to yourself?

TL;DR: as one very awesome person once told you "Don't be a knob." And go look at that photo again.

Xoxo

Angela