I have added a new step to my fitness routine: sauna. I try to go to the sauna every time I work out, and sometimes, if I am honest, I make it to the gym and only hit the sauna.
My incredible woman’s fitness expert taught me the benefits to my cardiac health, and while it took me a while to get used to, I can now regularly achieve my 20-minute mark.
The sauna also allows me to sit and look out the glass door with a view of the full-length mirror.
Each day, I see women enter the locker room, stop and look, and without fail, make yucky faces and poke around their stomachs, legs, glutes, and arms. Each time I see it, my heart breaks a little. They see something they don’t like, and I see a beautiful body I would love to have!
Then it hit me. I do the same thing. I wonder if any women move around the world and think to themselves: I would love to look like her. The answer, in my case, is the answer for all of us: yes.
We are so good at seeing the beauty and strength in other women and simultaneously blind to our own.
I am unsure what has cursed us with this illogical and irrational trait. I’ve wondered if my children would be falling victim to this same insanity. Sadly, my 8-year-old has already begun to pick apart her looks. I can’t help but blame myself. I’m sure they’ve heard me complain about my own. Or perhaps they’ve witnessed me in the mirror performing the deprecating ritual.
Like everything in my life, my kids will be the driving force behind my new goal: reforming my perception of myself. I want to learn to look at myself with the same loving eyes I see my daughters with.
