Look good...

Posted by Jennifer Rhine Williams

from an Instagram post by Sarah Nicole Landry

Years ago, I listened to a well-intended man speak on how he was on a "look good naked" diet. He went on to explain his desire to be aesthetically pleasing for his wife by making his body thinner and fitter, to look good naked.

It's amazing to me how some things are said so casually, yet in your mind they reveal themselves like a gas leak, slowly poisoning your thoughts.

And that's exactly what happened to me that day. A slow leak.

I remember sitting there, listening and feeling like it was over for me. I was 225 lbs., had birthed and breastfed 3 children. My body showed for it.

In the years to come it didn't matter how thin or fit I would come to be. "Look good naked" felt like an impossible standard placed on me in today's society.

Sure, I could look good dressed up. I could wear T-shirts in the bedroom, or be laying down just so. Pillows placed strategically. Thought put into every single move. Just be covered. Hide.

Nakedness was not something I looked forward to; it was something I feared.

And let me stop and say now that you don't owe anyone your nakedness. You really don't. Your body is forever your choice. No matter the relationship status.

But over the last few years I've slowly allowed myself to be seen. To myself first, and then to a man whose children these were not. With scars and the signs of the life and the nourishment that my body gave those children present and in sight.

And I realized, in all this guilt and shame in feeling I had to "look good naked", I had missed the entire point of nakedness.

A complete vulnerability, connection, intimacy. With oneself, and if chosen, another.

I had sold myself short.

With these gas leaks in my mind, I was missing the experience and gift of intimacy and connection by focusing on LOOKING good instead of FEELING good.

Missing how worthy I ALWAYS was of it.

Because I was always more than my body.
All stripped away, I see that now.
I can see that I was always more.
A feel good naked truth.