What if we could love ourselves exactly as we are?

abuse healing change the world jamie wiggins self love wellness Feb 17, 2025

What if we could love ourselves exactly as we are? What if we never learned otherwise? What if that sweet tender sacred you-ness was protected, honored and when it came time, initiated into its rightful stages of expression and wisdom. What if, from the beginning we learned that our worth did not come from the size of our waist, the pout of our lips, but our ability to show up, honor and cultivate our sacred essence, sharing our soul song with the world? I mean, seriously, what if? What if we knew in our bones that our bodies themselves were an expression of our sacred nature and to judge them was to dishonor that very nature itself. The physical world is not separate from the sacred but an expression of her divine beauty. I know this may sound like fantasy, but until we dream ourselves into being, the way of being that we long for, there is not yet a chance of this reality taking form.

So I ask you to ask the questions with me. What if?

I, like all the women I know, did not grow up loving my body. I did not receive judgments around my body at home. I was given loving and encouraging words. Yet, through the media, and it seems the air itself, I learned as I believe many of us are meant to learn, that my body was unworthy. I learned that Eve was cursed for eating the apple, I learned that lip gloss made me feel more loved, and without really understanding what I was learning, I fully drank from the cup of my value ability to receive love living in the physical. Of course there are layers to this. I am still unraveling these beliefs.

I am not always the loving witness to my shifting body, through babies, living and aging that I aspire to be. But I am devoted to my sacred nature and will keep coming back to this place of honoring, even when I get amnesia. When I once again get hypnotized by the latest beauty trend, when I once again buy the illusion of any body being anything less than glorious EXACTLY as it is. I am not immune to instagram, the lure of the miracle gummy, the most amazing new fasting plan, the plastic face massaging contraption that takes away your double chin, and anything else I might glaze over and momentarily get spelled by. Mirror mirror on the wall…she lives in all of us. The lure of beauty eternal. It’s just that we are telling the wrong fairy tale. We need to know our shadows and the futility of perfection, yes! But what if the wicked queen could radically love her reflection in that magic mirror? What if beauty herself wasn’t small, powerless and naive, but fully alive, powerful and big? What if we could let ourselves be as expressed, imperfect and beautiful and Nature herself? How would that change our fairytale?

I was always a deep and precocious child and have loved poetry and the arts since I was three. I was also a beautiful child and enjoyed the attention I received. I also wanted to be loved and seen for my true nature. I wanted to read my poetry and stories and my soul nature wanted to be heard! But instead the physical grew louder. My young self did not know how to differentiate my beauty, with my BEAUTY, my physical beauty with my sacred nature. These aspects of ourselves dance together to be sure, not separate but a finely woven tapestry. One is not even ‘better’ than the other. But when the soul self is not listened to, true beauty is lost.

Early adolescence is a tender time to learn to navigate where to place our value and where we belong in the tribe. If this is what the tribe around me values, then I suppose this is where my
value lives? The more I look like the images they feed me, the more love I will receive? The more I will be truly seen? Somewhere around this time I lost my way and my soul song grew quieter, she went underground.

The soul self is calling to share her song, to fulfill her growth and work in the world, and be received by the world as is only natural. But somewhere between 10 and 15 the culture of commercialized beauty buzzes and more often than not, confuses our radar. If we are too beautiful we are dangerous, if we are not beautiful enough by a small societal standard we are ostracized. We often do not have our council of aunties and grandmothers to remind us of the ancient wisdom that will guide us. We are not initiated into the wisdom ways to learn how powerful and necessary our sacred nature is, what a gift our physical bodies are and how we must care for them and protect them. I know at this age I did not know how to listen to the wisdom of my body. I did not have my council of aunties. The outside world placed value on my physical appearance, and so, so did I. I am thankful I was not a young person in the time of social media because I would have been altogether lost.

It was pain that brought me back to my body. Menstrual migraines, uterine cysts, fatigue, insomnia. Pain took me directly back to my womb. Dreams came to remind me of the ancient wisdom of my blood, of the wisdom that lived in me waiting to initiate me, to grow me into a strong enough vessel for my sacred song. This was a long spiraling process that often felt frustrating and fruitless. But all the while I was deepening into my body. It was an excavation process to unearth my soul song. I was regrowing my roots so that my sacred nature could fully blossom. This is a process that is possible for all of us. We must arrive back in our bodies, inhabit our wounds, the wounds of our ancestors and clear the way for our soul song.
I learned to listen to my body, my soul’s voice, the wisdom of my womb, my ancestors, and I learned about the magic of working with the seasons of the menstrual cycle, the very seasons alive in nature and how they are the roadmap to birthing my soul’s song into the world.

My body initiated me, called me back down into her through physical pain. She wanted me to remember my soul’s song and how to let it vibrate through every cell of this sacred body and out into the world.
Until we remember that it is within our bodies themselves that the magic key to our power, wisdom and creativity is held. Only then will we stop believing the lie of unworthiness. It is all a lie. It is a lie to keep us small. What if we could love ourselves exactly as we are and claim back our power, magic and soul’s song? What if every ripple, wrinkle and scar was a war cry to rip down the toxic messages being fed to our children about their unworthiness because of the way their sacred being has taken form? We would not judge the lumps of a tree, or the ridges of a cliff. How strange, how sad we have, up until now, let our power leak away. Plug the leaks, pull all that vital energy back into the body, your sacred body, home to your soul song.