You can laugh, snicker, and sneer all you want. The shame is yours, not mine.
I’ll choose my own metaphors and labels. Your finger wagging and insults just repel off me.
I stand before you ~ a post-menopausal woman with pendulous breasts, and a chin hair here and there. The benefits of youth have slipped away, though age has finally gifted me with enough self-love and confidence to accept myself for who I am.
My words might be simple, my heart naive, my experience limited. However, there is no shame in this. My body holds no inherent shame. My instincts and urges were born in me. As long as I strive to help others and not hurt them, I have no shame.
The Holy Spirit has been coaching me these past two years, helping me to let go of all my personal demons. I have learned to forgive myself for any real or imagined sins. Each day is a new day and a new beginning. Love really is the key to happiness.
In thanks, I will strive to teach self-love to others. Many of the students I see daily are tormented with self-doubt and low esteem. They are vulnerable to the opinion of their peers, and they so desperately want to fit in, so often their choices are unwise. I will continue to try and convince them that they are wonderful just the way that nature has chosen to gift them. Even the humblest have something to share.
My own daughter has many intellectual and physical challenges, and she also happens to have the purest heart I know.
movingforwardslowly 