I want to share this photo of me taken in 1989. I am the one in the middle. It was sent to me last night by someone in the photo. I had never seen it before.
I remember the day well as it was my last day at work after a three-year posting in Jakarta, Indonesia. I was 33 years old. I thought I was fat and ugly. I was a single mum in a challenging job and still trying to cope with an ex-husband lawyer who had constantly undermined my self-confidence and even after our divorce kept taking me to court (that didn't finish until 1991 when I told him in court that I had had enough of the nonsense and he could have our 8 year-old son because I wasn't doing this any more (but that is another story). My ex-husband had constantly told me I was fat and stupid and ugly (for my own good, of course) and I believed him and thought so too, so therefore it must be true, right? No! It has taken me until last night to realise that what I saw in the mirror was not what others saw. I think last night when I saw this photo I started to like myself again. The lesson has come nearly 25 years late, but I have finally got the message. Be nice to yourself. Being hyper critical achieves nothing. Take joy in what you can do and who you are.
And another lesson I learned - sometimes those who are critical of you are just jealous and everything they say should be ignored for the tripe it is. True friends don't make you feel bad about yourself - it really is as simple as that.
