This photo was taken moments before a glorious moment. And yet, I wanted to kill myself.
Here I was with my gorgeous niece Bonnie backstage at Brisbane Comedy Festival. She’d done a banging job on my make-up (YUP she did that all herself), my sister and I were literally moments away from stepping onstage with our amazingly fun and joyful comedy show, and in spite of all this…
…my brain was telling me how ugly and fat and unacceptable I am.
“Too fat.”
“Too old.”
“Oh my god, LOOK AT YOUR TUMMY.”
While I’m literally taking a cute selfie with my niece, one of the loves of my life, for whom I meant to be a role model of empowerment and confidence and self-love.
And now for the cracker: the show we were about to perform is a BODY POSITIVE SHOW.
Now spoiler: the show having to go on and all that, nobody was about to wait for me to do a Rocky-style training montage and whip myself up into a societally-acceptable form. The curtains were opening. And so they opened and so did I…to surrendering that my belly was gonna hang on out and so the hell what? And that magic that happens to many performers - where the stage itself is calming and relieving and the place you feel most at home - took over and the inner critic shut her damn mouth.
But that moment shook me.
Because here’s the thing: I am philosophically 110% on Team #BodyPositivity.
And I WANT to embody that and walk the walk and model that in the world. For my daughter. For my niece. For MYSELF. Because that’s how this stuff changes. With enough of us being willing to let our real selves be seen, until normal is…well, you know… normal.
But then even at a moment where I’m literally about to step onto a public stage to walk the walk - or dance the dance, as the case may be - even then, my inner critic decides this is the perfect time to kick off spouting all of the negative shit that society has told women forever.
And it hits me.
And it shits me that it hits me.
Do you ever feel like this? That you’re on board with a philosophy but then when it comes to the reality of living it out loud, it’s harder to dance the dance?