I Am Learning To Fight The Voice In My Head That Tells Me To Make Myself Smaller

There’s this group of women I see every week. We’re similar in the scariest of ways.

We’ve all spent time chained to a number. A number that will always be less than the one on the scale.

We’ve all cried over menus and French fries.  We’ve betrayed friends, betrayed ourselves. We say curse words and spew apologies for feeling too much. We’ve all listened to the voice in our heads saying we’re too much, too much, but not enough.

Every week we show up and curse and cry and sigh, because someone else gets it. Finally. Someone else knows the sound of the voice telling us we have to be smaller.

And every week we show up and practice fighting that voice. We’re learning to take up space, which isn’t something we’ve ever been allowed to do.

Was it society that told us to be small? To sit very still and cross-legged with perfect lipstick? I don’t quite know where it came from. But I know that there is this group of women I see every week, and we’re all trying to become the versions of ourselves that are untamed and free.

I’m fighting my own battles so that the next generation of women can spend a little less time fighting and a little more time feeling free.

I dream about having daughters who don’t know what it’s like to be judged by the shape of their body or the size label in their jeans. I want them to not feel the need to go hungry because the model on the cover of their favorite magazine only eats kale and zoodles. Actually, I don’t even want them to know what the word “zoodle” means. If they want pasta, then damn it, why would we eat zucchini instead?

I want to be messy and so undisciplined that I eat cake for breakfast and have no clue what I weigh. I want my body to be the least interesting thing about me because my nails are painted bright colors and my life is full of things that matter so much more.

There is this group of women that I see every week. We’re similar in that we’ve only got two options: we can survive, or we can figure out how to change the narrative. The first option is comfortable, but if we stick with the comfortable, then we will never find a world that sees past the surface.

I want to be part of a world where the voice in my head and all of the voices I hear on a daily basis align, and none of them are talking about the curve of my body.