Well, ladies
Quick question. When was the last time you looked in a mirror and did not fix something?
Not checked your teeth. Not adjusted your hair. Not looked at your stomach sideways and pulled your shirt down. Just looked at yourself the way you would look at someone you had not seen in a while. Curious. Not critical.
I could not answer that question on Wednesday and it messed me up a little.
I was getting ready to go out. Friday night, dinner with friends, good restaurant, the kind of night I live for. I was standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom doing the thing I always do: chin up, stomach in, check the arm situation, adjust the neckline, turn sideways, pull the fabric, decide if this is the one.
And I stopped. Not on purpose. I just caught my own face between adjustments and I did not recognize the expression. I looked like someone inspecting a car for damage. 😂
That is how I look at myself. That is how most of us look at ourselves. We walk up to a mirror and immediately start a damage report. What is wrong. What needs tucking. What has changed since last time and is the change acceptable.
I stood there and I made myself not fix anything. I put my hands at my sides. I looked at my body in this black dress that I like and I just stayed there.
Sixty seconds. It felt like ten minutes.
Here is what I noticed. My shoulders are good. Not magazine good. Mine good. They are strong and they are brown from summer and they hold things up all day without complaint. My stomach is not flat and it is not trying to be. My legs are my legs. They carried me up six flights of stairs last week when the elevator broke and they did not ask permission first.
I looked like a woman standing in a room. That is all. That is what I looked like. And somewhere around forty seconds I thought, she is not bad. Not hot in the way I meant it at twenty-five. Something else. Something that has to do with knowing exactly where I am and not wishing I was earlier. 🔥
Sonia wrote last week about letting her eyes go soft. Not focusing. Just seeing. I think that is what happened in front of the mirror. My eyes went soft on myself and for about twenty seconds I was not evaluating. I was just looking. And the woman I saw was sexy in a way that has nothing to do with the dress and everything to do with the fact that she has stopped apologizing for the body she is standing in.
That is a sexy thing. Standing in front of a mirror and not flinching. Not fixing. Just being there.
Clare does her three-point check every morning and I respect it. That is about being intentional. This is different. This is about seeing yourself without the checklist. Both are real. They are not the same. 🙌
Here is today.
Stand in front of a mirror. Any mirror. Dressed, undressed, does not matter. Set a timer for sixty seconds if you need to. Put your hands down. Do not fix anything. Do not adjust. Do not turn sideways.
Just look at the woman standing there.
She has been waiting for you to see her without a critique attached. Give her sixty seconds.
