I wrote this essay for a Hello Sunshine contest in 2021.
As a little girl, I used to watch my grandmom looking at her mirror; she loved to makeup her lips and put some jewelry while she watched me backwards. I remembered, all I wanted was to look like her: so elegant, so confident, so pretty but I was too different. She was white, I was tan, she was tall, I was short, she was an actress and I was anything but that.
As I teenager I used to watch my friends dressing up for a party in the mirror. They were pretty girls, blond girls, thin girls and all I wanted was to look like them. When I was going to be able to look at myself in the mirror that way? Maybe if I use heels, maybe if I learn how to put false eyelashes, maybe if I work out, maybe if I buy expensive clothes.
Then I became a grown up and found powerful women, intelligent women that used to look at themselves in the mirror before they give a speech. I wanted to practice like them in the mirror: looking secure, knowing the words, telling my truth but I was not that determinate, I didn´t know all the words and I haven´t tell to anyone the truth.
When I became a mom, I wanted to be the best mom but I didn´t know what was the perfect role model for that so I learned it from books. I read motherhood books and saw moms in the diaper changer being great moms, they knew how to calm their babies, how to play with them, how to breastfeed and I wanted that; but, How I was going to be that kind of mom? I wasn´t calm, I didn´t play as a child and my mom didn’t breastfeed me. Great moms, have great pictures with their children but how I was supposed to have a great picture and look at myself if I wasn´t that kind of mom, of course I couldn´t.
My body changed, and I wasn’t able to use the same swimsuit that I usually used in the summers. The reflection of the lake was too painful to see my “lovehandles” and my hips. I didn’t look like the other midlife crisis women. I really was in that crisis and I could see it in my body, in my “personal map” someone said. I did not have that boobs, that butt, that legs.
So, I resigned to not see myself in the mirror, I wanted but it was impossible; I didn´t have all the stuff necessary to see me as I was.
Then I started to write and figured out that it was never too late to look at me, even if I didn´t do it in a mirror. Eventually I opened my heart and saw all the beauty that was inside. With the time, I learned to watch my mind and found its drama as an “Oscar winner film”. I laughed and watched myself for the first time. Now I love to watch me in the mirror.
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