Celebrating 35: Things I'm Learning to Love, Accept, and Adore About Myself

This art piece reflects my effort to cultivate deeper self love and tenderness <3  

For my 35th birthday today, I am reflecting on things I've held shame, guilt, embarrassment or simple shyness and discomfort around. Some of them are imperfections, either past or present, that I am learning to love, accept, and adore about who I am - from the daily mundane to the deeply personal. Each one of these things is its own journey and I proudly celebrate them on the day of my rising into the 36th year of living on Mother Earth. I fully acknowledge I am a tender work-in-progress for this lifetime and beyond. Thank you as always for witnessing and celebrating with me. 

  1. I can be incredibly stubborn. 
  2. When things don't follow through according to plan, I can get irritated or anxiously controlling. 
  3. I really love to eat... and can throw down food. I was a chubby kid once so I can get embarrassed by this.
  4. Somehow I always get food stains on my clothes. But the imperfection is how neurotic I can be with them. I can’t move on with my life until the stain's been addressed. Dramatic, I know. 
  5. While I'm not an angry person, I can throw some pretty ugly angry tantrums with my family. 
  6. I can be incredibly competitive. I really don't like to lose. I live into my Leo here.
  7. I've slept with the same hugging pillow for 30+ years. It’s probably filled with lots of bacteria… 
  8. I’ve been an early sleeper and riser my whole life, a.k.a. an old lady my whole life. With the anti-sleep/rest culture, I felt super ashamed about this in my 20s (especially on Vegas trips!).
  9. My rising Scorpio runs deep into my bones. I love going deep. I’ve feared scaring others off but I realize I can’t let peoples' fears of themselves get in the way of how I want to be in the world.
  10. As deep as I am, I’m also a really silly, goofy, lighthearted person which means I can be a little awkward. 
  11. I experience daily life wearing a small details lens. I love in the details. I used to regret how much of life I saw, but now I know it’s a superpower. A beloved once told me I'd make a great mafia boss. So don’t fuck with me :) 
  12. I keep certain unimportant things like the same hair ties and pen for long periods of time. I take weird pride in not losing these small items. It’s definitely a neurotic control issue.
  13. I have constellations of freckles and sunspots on my face including a sizeable birth mark on my right cheek. I repeatedly refuse my mom's suggestion to get them removed.
  14. I grew up with strong thick legs and my inner thighs have never not touched. Fuck you standards of white beauty!
  15. My feet are really wide and my toes aren’t "feminine" looking. My childhood friends called them hot pockets.
  16. My arms and shoulders have a broader shape than what petite Asian women are known to look like (this has made wearing tank tops a self-conscious challenge).
  17. I have longer sideburns that make me look like the flying karate chicks in Chinese dramas.
  18. I feel most alive outdoors, pooping in holes I dig, hiking up steep mountain sides, and getting dirty. My mom tells me all the things I like to do are boy things (what does that even mean?)   
  19. I am deeply spiritual and do all the woo woo things like talk to trees and birds, collect crystals, and pull oracle cards. I believe and trust in the unseen. 
  20. I can be very physically affectionate. My family did not display these ways so I suppressed this aspect of myself. I love hugs and cuddles and holding hands and showing/receiving love through ALL the love languages, especially physical touch.  
  21. I like to go all in with the things and people I care about. I used to feel scared that loving big on others would scare them away since I grew up being told to “contain” my emotions.
  22. I love public speaking. Being an Asian woman and feeling the need to be modest, I’ve shied away from being open about how much I actually enjoy it. I'm proud of all the practice I've had with it.
  23. I like buying shit at full price, out of convenience. Growing up in a refugee family, this practice is blasphemy, and I have held survivor’s guilt around it.
  24. Sometimes I throw away food I can’t finish. Again, another incredulous act in my family. I refuse to stuff myself full as an act of resistance for my inner child who was forced to swallow everything at the table before she could leave it.
  25. I already mentioned how much I love food, but I can really put down some serious desserts and sweets. Especially ice cream :) 
  26. I’m extremely anxious in the water and as a result, I’m a terrible swimmer even with several years of lessons as a kid. I wish this wasn't the case. 
  27. I have a lower pitched tone of voice. In 7th grade choir, I was placed as an “alto” voice away from most of my friends and felt completely embarrassed about it.    
  28. I regularly mistaken certain phrases and quotes, like idioms, and miss or flip words around. For example, I say Mex Tex instead of Tex Mex. 
  29. I’m really bad at quantitative things. This has created A LOT of shame in my academic/professional career especially being an Asian person.  I get real anxious when anyone asks me to do math things. 
  30. I grew up in a wealthy white conservative suburb in Orange County. I have held a lot of privilege guilt about my upbringing in political/BIPOC spaces.  
  31. I participate in and perpetuate white dominant culture. This deserves a longer reflection but to keep it brief, in reviewing this work, my orientations around perfectionism, a sense of urgency, worship of the written word, more is better, and promptness are conditions I’m exploring and breaking down.
  32. I care a lot about other beings. I like to save spiders and dig little graves for dead bees I find. Caring too much has been a sore spot for me because I’ve been hurt by it (grew up without boundaries), but I know in my heart it’s a beautiful thing that the world needs more of.
  33. I am a romantic person. I used to feel embarrassed about this. For me, romance isn’t about grand gestures, masking myself to impress, or filling a void I can’t fill myself. It's about intimacy and vulnerability, and a deep commitment to thoughtfully creating in small ways a safe home for myself and another to be freely who we are. This applies to all my relationships. My chosen sisters know I’m all about the womance.
  34. While I am a pretty easy-going person, I have particulars about particular things. In the past, it didn't feel OK for me to be particular about anything as my conditioning was to accommodate others. 
  35. Along the same line, I hold MANY paradoxes within me. I can be this way AND that way, or feel this way AND that way. Good news is - these paradoxes no longer hold tension in the same way in my body. They just are what they are, and I try to be curious rather than judge myself.  
Phew! The reality is, I have many more uncomfortable or imperfect things that I am still exploring and discovering and learning to accept :) What are the imperfect things you are learning to love and celebrate about yourself? 

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