{makeupless me}

Are you comfortable in your own skin?  I mean - your own skin.  Not that which you conceal, powder, paint, and bronze...but the stripped-down, raw version of you.

I am speaking, of course, literally and metaphorically.

When my blog friend Tanya started her Makeupless Me series recently, I knew I had to join in.  So much of what she wrote about this topic rings true with me.  We need to love and appreciate ourselves in every form.  Even the pale, tired-looking, flawed version.  Makeupless.

This is me.   I am thirty years old.  I have crow's feet.  The lines on my forehead, though not pronounced, are deepening.  There is sun damage from years of using a tanning bed, as well as not using sunscreen consistently.  Also, after my pregnancy (strangely not during) I developed a dark pigmentation on my upper lip that seems to be here to stay.

I could look at this picture and get sad over the aging and the damage.

But I don't, because this is me.  Aging.  Damaged. 

I think of the life I've gotten to live -- the years I've been blessed with that have put the age on my face, and I know have to be thankful.  For the laughter, the surprises, the healthy pregnancy, and the sunny vacations.  For the years.

Some people don't get thirty years.  Some get hardly any in comparison, and yet they make the best of every day.  Case in point:  Josiah Viera.  When I saw this video on ESPN the other day I sobbed from beginning to end.   I sobbed because of how selfish I am, and how often I take the smallest things for granted.  I sobbed because I'm a mother to a healthy baby boy, completely undeservedly, and I cannot even fathom the idea of outliving him.

Pause my playlist at the bottom of the page, then please watch this video:



Be thankful for your years.  For your age.  For every line and spot on your face that says you have lived and you are still alive.

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