• Health & Body

    I Love My Face

    [Guest Post by Songine’ Clark] – I love my face. Yeah, I said it. I love my brown eyes, I love my big nose, I love my round lips, I love my small ears, and I love my brown skin. There was a time when I definitely could not say those things confidently though. I remember back in high school growing up and going through those lovely body changes. I developed pretty early, so I guess my body decided to just let acne run rampant during my middle and high school years. I tried it all to make the acne disappear, but nothing worked. It did suck going through those…

  • Health & Body,  Relationships

    I Love My Body – Fat Girls

    I once thought I had this really great idea for one of my next books. I wanted to call it: For All The Fat Girls: Who Never Thought Their Dreams Could Come True. Whew. Long title. It took me even longer to realize it was kind-of-offensive. Whoops. Maybe that’s because I was used to carrying around the label that: I Was Fat. One thing I know: labels might lie, but clothing labels sure don’t! Just try putting on a size 9 when you’re a ballooned sized 24. Yep. That was me in high school. Last week, I mentioned in more detail about my health issues related to eczema, and how…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Body – Stretch Marks

    [Guest Post by Alice Sullivan] – Because of my stretch marks, I have struggled with body image for as long as I can remember. I started puberty early, had a woman’s figure by the age of twelve, and never felt comfortable in my own skin. I was always active with sports, but by the 8th grade, my soccer coach pulled me aside during a practice and said I was putting on too much weight. I might have weighed 150. At 5’4” I wasn’t rail thin, but I wasn’t that heavy. Still, I knew I needed to lose weight or I would get benched. So at age 13, I dieted for…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Body – Anorexia

    [Guest Post by Emily Wierenga] – I don’t know when a child typically becomes aware of her body–or even what anorexia means. For me, it was when a neighbor came over and commented on what a big girl I was. I was seven, and her tone was disapproving. So I went to the mirror and stared at the face of a girl with a mushroom cut and thrift-store clothes, and I tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Then I put my fingers around my wrist, and they just barely reached and that would become the way I measured my value. For the next six years, I’m not…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Body – Esthetician

    [Guest Post by Kayla Johnson] – I am an Esthetician–and let me tell you–celebrities are not perfect. Here’s the truth: To look like a celebrity you have to have a stylist who can look at your body and will dress you in the right clothes to conceal your flaws and accentuate your strong points. The book The Science Of Sexy shows you how to do this yourself, and is a great book! You will then need a professional makeup artist and hair stylist and be willing to sit in a chair for sometimes two hours to make you perfect. That’s right–two hours. After that you will spend thousands of dollars…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Halloween Body Parts

    [Guest Post by Meredith Munro] – When it comes to body shape and size, I feel more like Halloween body parts. Let me explain. I’ve spent most of my life being rail thin and tall like a skeleton–a whopping 5’8″ and 3/4ths, baby! I ate whatever I wanted, exercised rarely, and pretty much never worried if I looked fat. By a lot of people’s standards, I had it easy and maybe in some ways I did. I’ll admit that I’ve been blessed with good health and good genes–yeah mom and dad. Like any warm-blooded American woman, I’ve often fixated on my flaws and been self-conscious about my body. Loving my…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Skinny Body

    [Monthly Columnist – Rebekah Snyder] – Please don’t judge me for my skinny body. “Oh my gosh, Rebekah, you are sooo skinny!” She said it like it was a compliment. As if she had called me cute or gorgeous or some other word that could lift a wounded spirit or brighten a woman’s day. But no, she called me “skinny,” which isn’t a compliment at all. On the contrary, my dictionary describes skinny as, “lacking sufficient flesh; very thin; emaciated; lacking usual or desirable bulk, quantity, qualities or significance.” And you wonder why I felt insulted. Even though I knew it was meant to be a compliment—even though there were…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Scarred Body

    [Guest Post by Lindsay Kathleen] – If you would have asked me as a teen if I loved my scarred body, I would have told you a big fat NO! The last question a parent wants to answer is, “Would you like us to make the incision vertically down her chest or horizontally across your daughters chest?” Stunned that they even had the option, my parents sought advice from the cardiac surgeon. “Usually, when a person undergoes open heart surgery, we make an incision vertically. The preferred method is a vertical incision because we are able to have direct access to her sternum. And since her heart is protected by…

  • Health & Body

    I Love My Body – Green

    [Guest Post by Arlene Pellicane] – It was a breakfast appointment with an unexpected blessing. A green blessing! My husband James and I were at a business breakfast a few weeks ago with a group of realtors–my husband is a realtor–in fact, he sold Renee and Marc their house! Across from me, there was a fit, thin, and very energetic realtor wife. She happened to be a fitness instructor and as we begin to chat, her enthusiasm for the color green came out! “In the morning, I take a cup of spinach, a cup of kale, and a cup of collard greens, mix that up with a few grapes for…

  • Health & Body

    I Hate My Body

    [Guest Post by Sarah Miller] – I hate my body. Or at least, that’s what I would have said if you had met me two years ago, before God decided to radically change my life AND my body. I had always been overweight–and ridiculed for it. From the age of 8, I started putting on weight and never bothered to take it back off again. By the time I was a senior in high school I was 250lbs–and at a place where I didn’t care what I looked like. Every day I wore the same outfit: baggy jeans, baggy sweatshirt, hair in a ponytail. No variety. No desire to make…