On-set at Refinery 29

Yesterday I spent several hours on-set at Refinery 29, an incredible online platform for young girls and women. They were interviewing me for a new series called “How I Learned To Love My…” and yesterday’s topic was boobs. It’s a simple question with, as it turned out for me, a very complex answer. Growing up I was never especially proud of my body. Never flashy, always self-conscious, especially of my chest. As it seems to be the way for me as I age and finally “grow up,” now that I am in my mid-forties, a single, divorced mother, I have grown to love and be proud of my body and all of it’s imperfectly perfect wobbly parts that have carried me this far. As a mother to a ten-year-old daughter and an eleven-year-old son, I am acutely aware of how important it is to be aware, present and engaged in their lives. And with all that I have, I try every day to be a positive role model for them in all ways, including positive body image.

At the end of the interview, the producer asked what I would say to my younger self. I was caught off guard and choked up and uttered the words, “Oh, poor young girl.” After a few minutes I collected myself and said “I would tell her she is amazing. I would tell her to keep going and that I am proud of her.” I was immediately whisked up into the magnitude of it all. Of growing up, of raising children, of this strange and beautiful world we are navigating with a map that is in a constant state of flux hence, no real map at all. Being a mother has amplified everything I am, swirling everything up like little hurricanes from my own experiences in life as a mother but also as a girl, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a woman.

We need to put that power back into women's hands. To give them a space to reflect, respond, absorb, heal, help, grow and lead. We need to bring the village back so women and girls feel supported, nurtured and celebrated. Because we are amazing!

Huge thanks to platforms like Refinery 29 for giving girls and women a place to go where they can feel celebrated and beautiful because we are all beautiful and amazing.