Sugar Shock

We are shaped by our thoughts, we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. - Buddha

There have been 2 things about my body in the last year or two that have made living with myself incredibly hard: my skin and my hair.

My skin is pale with a pink tone and lots of freckles, depending on the time of year. I've never really wanted to be tanned, I enjoy being fair skinned. I think pale is coming back into style, it's nice every once and a while to be in style =)

For a long time though my skin has been causing me a lot of physical and emotional pain. Without getting too descriptive basically I would breakout all over my body, which was both painful and made me feel worse about myself. It made it hard to walk or exercise and took my self-esteem down very low.

My hair is fine and it's mostly straight. I used to perm it a lot when I was younger and high light it. Then I realized one day how much I loved my hair as it was, this warm brown color with subtle red highlights. I loved how soft it was and how it had a natural bounce. Yeah it was too fine to do much with and it was tough to give it a lot of body but eventually came to love the natural quality of my hair.

I haven't done anything to my hair in about 5 years, all the color has come out and I rarely use my product but I suppose that is something else I am lucky about, I can just wash with shampoo only and leave the house. My hair is straight and brown and that's ok =)

The thing is, it's been thinning over the years. There is a debate to this as nobody seems to really notice this but me but I remember how I used to have so much hair fall out all the time that I had to look behind me all the time to make sure hair wasn't there for someone else to find. Balls of my hair would end up on blankets in the house and my sweaters.

The point of all of this is, I've been eating better, trying really hard to drink more water and slowly getting more exercise. I'm also on a new medication, which has cleared up my skin amazingly and my hair seems so much fuller. So I feel better, which is important because I've felt so bad for so long.

ps. I just came across this picture I took after I got married last year and had to get a new passport for our honeymoon to Ireland. It's so weird to see how much you've aged in 9 years. If only I appreciated how I looked back then...