Angeline

Angeline is a 45-year-old wife, mother (human and furbabies), sister, and friend. Her body has “danced, hugged, laughed, cried, endured physical abuse and sexual assault, survived cancer, living with an autoimmune disease, went through natural childbirth, climbed mountains, played with children, loved on humans and animals, crafted, and built, and painted.” Her story in her own words is below.

Self-love means acceptance – acceptance of who I am and who I want to be. It can be physical, too. We all look at ourselves and criticize ourselves but I learned a long time ago that my body does amazing things, so I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m not going to be ashamed of my rolls, my scars, my cottage cheese, and my imperfections because I did eat my dessert first.

Self-love to me is just really accepting myself mentally, physically, and spiritually. I’m Catholic and I’ve struggled with that a lot in the last few years with things that have gone on and I just have to accept that that’s where I’m at with that, too. That’s been really hard – or to accept the fact that my daughter, who was baptized, sent through all the classes, did her communion and stuff… that’s not her, either. So yeah, as long as I know I’m a good person and I’m doing what I can, that’s what matters. 

I think I’m pretty far in my [self-love] journey. I think I’m a lot farther than probably 95% of my friends. The reason is because of life events. I came from a very bad household. My father was extremely abusive, my mom was complacent and also abusive at times. I ended up moving in with one of my sisters when I was fifteen. As I had my own child, I had to make the decision that I was not going to be that person and I was not going to raise my kid that way. That’s why we moved to Arkansas – to get far away from all of it. That was the beginning of my journey – I had to learn to forgive those people and let go of the anger; I had so much anger. I had broken relationships – I broke up with my fiance I’d been with for eight years because I knew I couldn’t love him. I couldn’t love him because I didn’t love myself because of what I’d gone through. 

So once I had my daughter, that really changed things for me – I knew I needed to do something. That’s when I started my self-love journey of accepting that these things happened but they don’t define me. It’s something that happened to me – it’s not who I am and it’s not who I have to be. At 30 when she was only seven years old, I got cancer. I found out I had kidney cancer and they basically said, ‘Chemo and radiation won’t work. So we’re going to take you in. We don’t think it’s spread, but if we open you up and it’s spread, we’re just going to close you up. We’re not going to do anything and you’ll have about 4-6 weeks. If it hasn’t spread, we’ll take your kidney out and you’ll live a long, happy life. Make sure you have all your stuff in order before you go into surgery – things for your daughter, your funeral arrangements – everything has to be done.’ 

So my daughter, who is seven – I had just gotten divorced, just found out I had cancer – and now we’re sitting down at the table and I’m looking at coffins, purchasing a burial plot, and going through who she’s going to live with, and we’re talking about this stuff and she’s seven. So that was a big defining moment. And we have an excellent relationship to this day because of that. When we fight – cause we fight, we’re mom and daughter – we instantly say we’re sorry, we hug each other, and we tell each other how much we love each other. Because we know we were so close to not having that.

[Several years later], I lost my job of like, 13-14 years and then a few months later I found out I had an auto-immune disease. It was a year before we found out what it was – I spent a year in bed, in and out of the hospital, in emergency rooms, at doctors visits, taking medications, and that’s where I put on 50 pounds. I had weighed the same for 18 years. I put on 50 lbs in a year, and that was a big hit to my self-love. I liked who I was inside, but I felt very ugly on the outside and I got very depressed. My daughter reminded me one day – she said to me, “You know what?! This is bullshit because you’re still here. We went through this when you had your cancer – you’re here for a reason. The fact that you’re letting your weight determine your self-value is bullshit.” The next day, her and I went out and bought some clothes that fit. It was amazing that once I put on clothes that fit… I felt good and I felt sexy again. She was very insightful – I think she saved me more than she realizes. 

So now I’m happy. I know my worth. Physical things can change, but we don’t. Life is short – my daughter and I know that. I just lost my best friend in January from cancer, too and it just… with Corona I hadn’t gotten to see her in a year and it just sucks. Life is too short to NOT love yourself. You know, it really is – no matter what you look like. Because who gives a damn? So that’s what self-love is to me – that’s how I got here – my childhood, my daughter, my cancer, losing my job – it’s crazy how much that affects your worth and your purpose. We don’t know what people are going through. When these things happened, it changed my perspective. 

Women [can be] awful. They sabotage each other and talk bad about each other and it’s because they don’t like themselves – that’s why. And it makes me sad. I just… I wish that all of us women could just get together and realize that we all have struggles – with ourselves, with our families, with our husbands, with our kids, with our dogs, with our grass! We all have struggles. We need to support each other. We have enough tearing us down as it is.