PERFECTION ... NO, THANK YOU ! AUTHENTICITY ... YES, PLEASE !

By Christine Jayakaran

So what I'm gonna share might come across as being very shallow but bear with me will you... just for a bit.

From the age of sixteen I have been a fitness freak. I love and I mean literally love working out! I can go a day without social media but not without getting my work out on. I loved being fit so that I looked and felt good. As any fitness inclined individual will confirm the mark of being really fit are flat abdominals. Those.. I had until March 2008. My three little angels arrived over the next few years and gone were the abs and in came the flab. A “friend” of my mine, an obsessive, compulsive fitness junkie on observing my pooch with its loose skin suggested I try plastic surgery. Of course I brushed it aside saying those marks were like battle scars, they told a story. I never dwelt much on it because I guess the fitness freako inside of me was convinced I could lose it all and be in the shape I was at twenty. Well, hello thirties... you are pretty unforgiving !

I notice that the pooch isn't budging and my silhouette isn't as svelte as it used to be. I realised I was starting to get paranoid about what I ate and how much I worked out. Until...

Until my sweet husband had an intervention with me. He sat me down and told me to go easy on myself. My body had gone through the beautiful strain of delivering three babies and that my focus should be on staying healthy more than anything. As he said it I realised I had been pursuing perfection rather than being myself and staying balanced. My pooch is symbolic of the three greatest miracles of my life.

When doctors said I couldn't have normal babies, God in his kindness turned that diagnosis right around and gave me more than I ever dreamt I would have.

Today I am reminded to stay grateful and true to myself. I will remember that there are some hurdles and bumps (pun intended) in our lives that are left there for a purpose. They will be a constant reminder of where I was, where I am now and who I am destined to be in the future. So show off those scars, those weaknesses, those things that the world insists if you don't have you have to hide or cover up.

Let's be ourselves. Our unadulterated, normal selves.

This is not to say I'm advocating letting yourself go or walk around dressed immodestly. But I would aim to live my life without filters, unedited and raw.