Tell Your Children They Are Beautiful

Because you were frustrated with your diet
and I was 15 pounds heavier than you wanted to be
while you were another 50 beyond that
And it was a bad day
You told me I was fat
and I believed you.

Because no one had ever told me anything different
I believed you so hard
that years later
I would scoff at men who called me beautiful
I would roll my eyes and stick out my tongue
because I thought they were mocking me
I was not beautiful.

How could I be
You told me I was fat.

I cried the day I remembered this
Asked by one of those wonderful men
Who had told me I was ugly?

It was you, Mom
How could you
I am thirty-two years old
and you’ve still never told me
I am beautiful.

Because we don’t do that
in our family
it is vain to talk of beauty
I’m smart, isn’t that enough?

But I AM beautiful
And not just because those men have told me so
And shown me so

I am Beautiful
because I don’t believe you anymore
I know I am beautiful
Inside and out
because beauty isn’t about what other people think
It’s about how I feel about myself

I Am Beautiful
and I hope you know that
You are, Too.

 

(Reposted from FetLife)

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2 Replies to “Tell Your Children They Are Beautiful”

  1. I remember a time my mother told me I looked like a whore in a miniskirt that I had just bought when shopping with my dad. I was 13. I’m 36 now, and I still haven’t let that go. I’m sure she doesn’t remember it and would probably deny it in horror if I called her on it now. Crazy how much our parents affect us, and how little they realize it. Makes me very introspective as a parent now. This poem is a beautiful examination of that.