rose in bloom - my metamorphosis!

My fantastic, fabulous metamorphosis! 

The day I truly understood I was a WOMAN first and foremost dawned bright and beautiful. Not unlike many other days. The big difference was that on this day an overwhelming and inner awareness came upon me that I was a woman; a feminine, female woman.   Not a “fat” woman but a wholesome, flesh and blood, real-life woman.  The fact I was a big woman was merely that; my size had and has nothing to do with the essence of my womanhood or my sensuality.  

Can I please repeat that again.   Because I feel it’s important for all of us to take this in.  The fact we are big women is merely that: our size had and has absolutely nothing to do with the essence of our womanhood or our sensuality.   

It was a special day for me. I sat and allowed the inexplicable awareness of “knowing” to embrace my every fibre. I felt like I’d never felt before. Here I was a fifty year old at long last “understanding”  I was womanly albeit plus-size.  Obviously I'd been made this way for a special purpose.  The moment was earth shattering. 

 I then knew without any doubt that seeing I had been made this way it was about time I accepted myself as I was, here and now. Not when I had met the “ideal” blueprint of a slender and slim woman suggested or demanded by other people, but now.   Here and now, right now!

It was the day I also realised I was a sensual woman. The day I realised I could achieve anything I set out to do. The day I realised I had skills and could use them and share them. The day I realised I could experience love. The day I realised I deserved better of myself, and therefore of others. The day I realised I didn't have to live my life according to someone else’s decree. The day I realised I was me - original, unique, a one-off and someone who could and should never be compared to or with anyone else.   I realised no-one could make a copy of me, because I am a masterpiece in my own right. 

I still had a lot of learning to do. A lot of painful, agonising growing up to do. A lot of lessons to be experienced, and a lot of shedding of, not weight, but other people's baggage.  Baggage I had taken into my self until I truly believed I was a worthless fat person who deserved nothing good or right or beautiful, simply because I was big. 

But having read the book written by this young woman on the other side of the world, I knew now that nothing, absolutely nothing negative that anybody said to me or about me or did to me, would ever effect me or influence me or have an impact upon my life, ever again. 

Can you believe it?  This person, this fat girl Barbara Roberts, had written a book detailing all my heartache. How did she know? How did she recall how I felt as a child. As a schoolgirl. As a teenager. As an adult. Was she watching my life through binoculars? How could she? She lived half a world away. The photos in her book show her and her siblings and her Mum and Dad, and I've never ever seen them before. So how did she know about me, and my pain? 

What she knew about me showed me I was not alone. Here was this girl in another land and in a different hemisphere, writing about my pain and heartache. She understood. She experienced the same feelings as I did. The same brokenness. I couldn't put her book down. Even today when I need to be reminded I am a special person, I reach up into my bookshelf and pull down this dog-eared book and once again travel the pathway of understanding of her story and mine. 

The words in her book give me warmth and love and compassion. She reinforced every single thing I felt, and feel, about myself. She reinforced my inner beliefs that I am a decent and worthwhile person. She reinforced my long hidden dreams of being able to turn my life around. She reinforced my belief in myself. Here was this stranger, entering my life through her written words, and she had in one single stroke, wiped away the negative things I had believed about myself for too long and which I have since proven to be inaccurate and wrong.

I decided at that very moment, that if I too, could help someone pick up the pieces of their life, take on the armour of self-belief, tread the rocky road of understanding and reach the peak of self acceptance, then I would do everything I could to meet that aim. 

For I now understand what Eleanor Roosevelt meant when she said:

“Remember, 

no one can make you feel inferior

 without your consent.”  

My objective? 

To open my mind to all the wonderful things around me and to expand my thinking to include me, and my needs and wants 

What I gained! 

Control of “self” and my attitude towards myself

"Rose In Bloom" - © Copyright 2002-2020, Rosemary Parry-Brock, Australia

(Please bear in mind this booklet was first printed in the 1990s.  Compare that with today's attitudes.)

Copyright © R Parry-Brock, 2002 

Reprinted 2010

Reprinted 2012

Reprinted 2014

Reprinted 2017

Published on Blogger © Rosemary Parry-Brock, 2020

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