You Have Permission To Take Up Space
As women, we are fed the message day in and day out that we are supposed to stay small. Small in our bodies. Small in our actions and accomplishments. Small in our voices. Today, I want to give you permission to take up all the space you need, body and voice. Because, as women, we are a powerful vessel and no one should tell you otherwise.I grew up believing that I needed to try and be as small as I could be. There isn't an exact time where I remember this belief starting, but one thing was sure, smaller bodies were good in my mind. The smaller, the better. Smaller meant I didn't stand out. It meant I could fit in with everyone else. I tried to look like everyone else, wear the same clothes as everyone else, the same name-brand shoes. Though I will say, I wasn't very good at it...I always seemed to get that "popular" thing after everyone else had had it for months. But my goal was always to fade into the background, with my size, what I wore, how I acted.This showed up in the way I spoke and shared my opinion with people. My opinion was what everyone else's opinion was. I didn't recognize my own voice, my own thoughts, my own beliefs. Or if I did, I didn't share them because I was afraid of being different. I was afraid of standing out, of being too big.I remember getting a pair of gold hoop earrings in high school and being afraid of wearing them because they were showy and would draw too much attention to my face. And what if people looked at me and saw who I really was? That was too scary. So I wore simple studs. This may be a silly example, but it showed a deeper part of who I believed I was and what my deepest fears were; to be looked at too closely and for people to see my insecurity and think to themselves, that girl's trying too hard.I was so insecure, looking back. I was so concerned with what others thought of me that I tried to be as small as I possibly could. But at the same time, I desperately wanted to be accepted and thought maybe by losing weight and making a name for myself as the "healthy girl" people will love me. So, that's what I did.Getting praise for being small felt good. So good that I worried if I wasn't small that I'd amount to nothing. So the belief built up inside of me that smaller was always better, and I made it my goal to get smaller and smaller and smaller.Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self that she is enough. That she doesn't need to be small, to be "the healthy girl", to be worthy. That she can have an opinion and share her thoughts with the world, even if they're different from how other people think. That she can say, "no" sometimes and people won't love her any less.This morning I was reading the book, "Letting Go of Leo" by Simi Botic, another amazing health coach & intuitive eating counselor, which is actually our current book club book inside The Nourish Lab, my intuitive eating membership group. In the book, Simi shares her own story of breaking up with perfection. I resonate with a lot of Simi's words.Specifically, in the chapter titled "Taking Up Space", Simi shares her own beliefs about losing weight. She shares that losing weight made her feel smaller. And that the smaller she was, the less space she took up. And the less space she took up, the less she would bother people. And another reason was that, when she lost weight, people told her she was doing a good job. Weight loss made her feel like she was doing something right in the world.I resonate so much with these beliefs. I was addicted to compliments from other people basically telling me I was "good" for being small, for being skinny. So then I began to believe, what if I'm not these things? What then? Will I be anything in this world?If you have these same beliefs, I so understand you. But I also know that the belief that you have to be small to be worthy of love, of acceptance, of purpose, is so far from the truth.
Sometimes I like to imagine what the world would be like if more women took up space.
...if more women let go of the belief that small is good and big is bad....if more women put their energy towards making a difference in the lives of others and this world as opposed to just trying to be smaller....if more women loved themselves the way they love others....if more women spoke freely and shared their thoughts rather than just agreeing with what men say.The world would be unrecognizable, in my opinion...in a good way. So, I want to invite you to get uncomfortable a little bit with me here. Ask yourself, what beliefs do you have around being small? What fears do you have around taking up space?