Christina

I think self-love is the courage to do whatever you want to do regardless of what other people think of you. When I moved here to Arkansas, I met some great women but they were not like me. They were very feminine and very put together and I struggled with self-identity for a long time. To be like them – they were so pretty and so delicate and I wasn’t. So it was just the courage to say, “I’m not that person – I’m just not going to be that person ever.” Just do whatever the fuck you wanna do and just be happy doing it. Just wake up in the morning and be like, “Yes! I can do all of these things.” The courage to get up and do it all over again after you fail – that’s where the magic is. That’s where you blossom and grow. For me it’s straight courage. It’s getting up and doing it every day and doing it for you.

I’m at peak self-love right now. This is exactly where I wanna be, this is the place I’ve been trying to get to my entire life – self-sufficient, independent, but still a good mother and a good wife. But I’m doing all of these great things for me now. My husband is super supportive of every decision I make, which is awesome because a lot of husbands aren’t. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I wake up every day at 1:45 a.m. I go to sleep at 7:00 every night. I’ve been doing that for two years. I get up every morning when the alarm clock rings and I’m like, “YES! LET’S GO!” I get up at 1:45 – it takes me about half an hour to get myself together. Then I eat my first real meal, which is huge – let that rest for 20-30 minutes. Every morning without fail I’m at the gym at 3:45 a.m. – I have to get to the gym and lift, followed by cardio. I come home, I eat a full meal again. Then I have to get ready to go to work. I go to work for the entire day, I go to a class at night, come home, go to bed, and I do it again, and again, and again. Every day. I have no quit – I’m not fucking quitting. 

For me, doing the same thing every day at the same time – rituals – they’re so calming. I grew up – my father went to jail when I was very young and we had nothing and there was no certainty and no rituals. It was just throw it up in the air and wherever it lands – if you eat today, if the bills are paid, if you have electricity on – who knows? Statistically women that come from those kind of families – low income neighborhoods, single mother – you know, they don’t make it. They have kids right away, get into drugs, they drink, they don’t get good jobs. I waited till I was 30 to have my kid. I was traumatized – I was like, “No. That’s not happening to me.” 

I had always wanted to be a cop and I guess that’s because of what we went through with my father being a drug dealer and the mess that that created. We had nobody – we were just left – us as kids, we had no guidance after that, no one really cared what we did. My mother was an awesome mother but she had very little to give to four of us. So I wanted to be a cop since like forever. I went in, I applied, and they sent me to the academy the next month. I hustled through it and I got a job in this very small little town in Georgia, I was the only woman on the force, and they were great to me. 

I went to social work after that. My job was an investigator for the state so I took people’s babies when they were abused. I took kids that needed to be taken but always encouraged families to stay together if they could, offering resources. I burnt out – my heart just broke after a while. It was tough – I don’t think I saw my own family for a few months. I was just like, “This has gotta stop.” I was doing things, but I wasn’t happy doing those things and so I got a job at the school and I’ve been so happy there. So I decided I was going to go to college while I’m here and now I’m the first person in my family to have a master’s degree, which I’m so stoked about! 

I learned to play the ukelele last year and I went to Iceland and sat on a glacier and played Dust in the Wind by Kansas. It was a pivotal moment. I was like, I’m gonna learn this, then I’m gonna sit on a goddamn glacier and I’m gonna play this goddamn song and I fucking did it. It was amazing. It was a high point. I’m at that high point in my life where I’m doing all the things. I’m not gonna stop. I love where I’m at. 

It’s okay to smile in the mornings. I’ll get up in the mornings and I’ll smile. If I’m happy right now and my day turns to shit, the smile was wasted on nothing. Why would I not smile in the morning? I’m not gonna curse the day. I have every reason in the world to be happy right now. I’m healthy, I’ve got a healthy kid, good husband, a nice house – all the things that I didn’t think that I deserved as a young person. 

We’re all in this together. If you don’t feel like you fit in or you feel like, “I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough to be here – they’re not like me,” you don’t have to be like anybody. Everyone has something good to offer. Just get in there. It doesn’t matter if [people] are nothing like you. You know, women look at me and they see my size and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t be friends with her – she’s big.” Somebody will love you exactly how you are. You can’t fit a circle into a square. Love you and do you. You live one time – that’s it. Have the courage to get up every day and say, “I’m doing this – I’m going to do everything I want to do,” and do it.