Day 7. When did you allow yourself to take up space? A few years ago, I got in the habit of taking m
Day 7. When did you allow yourself to take up space? A few years ago, I got in the habit of taking my measurements every morning. I would wake up, pick up a measuring tape, wrap it around my waist, look for the most minute, decremental difference on the yellow and black track. I was the smallest I had ever been and yet my body had begun to feel like a self-indulgent excess. And why in the world would I believe I was deserving of self-indulgence, and even more audaciously, of excess? There’s a line @shopedelano said years ago that’s stuck with where she described this as big black girl syndrome, the feeling that just by existing, you were too much. I was a dark skinned girl who had learned that I existed in this confusing liminality between hyper-visibility and invisibility and the only way I could deal with it was trying to shrink- physically- as much as I could. Have I allowed myself to take up space? I don’t know that I have succeeded at that, intentionally at least. I think, now, I do exist a little more freely and I can only hope that I continue to take those small freedoms wherever I can. https://www.instagram.com/p/CU5ZmqTJstM/?utm_medium=tumblr -- source link