#loveyourbody #howweseeit

Love Your Body – Love Yourself

Today is the 15th anniversary of the National Organization for Women’s (NOW) Love Your Body campaign. Organized to combat the negative messages that the media and society offer to women about their looks, their bodies – indeed who we are and who everyone but we decide we are – the work of the Love Your Body campaign is more important than ever.

I am proud to be collaborating once again with Beth Akerman https://plus.google.com/u/0/103274398541354707265/about and the lovely ladies of the How We See It Vol. II to benefit Love Your Body. (You can preview volume I here) http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3176099 Many of your favorite female photographers have contributed selfies, writings and images to the cause of changing the perceptions of beauty and indeed, ENOUGH The book will available for ordering around Oct. 31st. all proceeds will benefit Love Your Body

The image above is a very vulnerable and personal one for me. The dark lines are hysterectomy scars – 2 long jagged lines that for a number of years represented loss for me. Yet those long jagged lines represent so much more – strength, survival, womanhood regardless of any ability to bear children (I can still love and nurture the next generation), beauty, softness and love. Scars are beautiful – they offer visual testimony to who we are, where we have been and what we have learned along the way. Remember that you cannot punish your body into health, you can only love it there.

I leave you with this. For those of you who are struggling with beauty and appearance envy :

If I acknowledge my beauty & talent, I do not have to envy your gifts.

If I recognize my strengths, I don’t need to emphasize your flaws.

When I am aware of my power, I can enjoy the differences & similarities

of your fire. We can promote each other, delight in each other.

Dance with each other. ~Christina Kadlec aka Magdalena Christina

© 2012 Paulissa Kipp I am a Curious Lens Goddess, Writer and Artist documenting the world – the beautiful, curious and often overlooked. I see the infinitely layered world not only with my eyes, but most importantly, with my heart. Find me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/116071275946594200077?rel=author