It often feels like my body is all I have to give. It feels like my worth decreases when I’m a higher weight, when my stomach is softer and my thighs overlap. When I look in the mirror and see someone so far from the magazine covers, I feel like I have nothing left to offer. I look at this reflection with tears in my eyes and wonder why anyone would ever want me. My body bank is empty, and I feel poor in the currency of attractiveness.

It doesn’t matter that I think everyone else is beautiful at every size. It doesn’t matter that I love seeing curvier people in crop tops or shorts. Because the same doesn’t apply to me. Somehow my currency is my body, and it’s all that I have to offer.

But we are more than our bodies. We are so much more, and it is time we discover that.

Your body is the smallest part of you

If your body was everything you have to offer, then why do you have all of these people in your life that don’t care about it? If your body makes you so unloveable, then how do all these people manage to love you, sometimes even more than you love yourself?

It’s easy to feel like your body is the most essential aspect of who you are. Like you’ll be happy when you’re smaller. When you lose X amount of weight, people will like you more. But if your friends wouldn’t like you more for it, why would anyone else?

Your happiness is not attached to your weight. Because no matter how much smaller you become, you’ll never find that assurance, as you’ll always link it to a number that grows further and further away. Your body will never bring you happiness because it is not the keeper of your joy. Your joy rests in your heart and mind; it breeds in the connections you make, the people you love and those that love you back.

No one loves you for your body. If you think there is someone who only loves you for your body, then they don’t really love you at all. Love lies in everything within your body.

You have so much to offer

You have so much to offer the world. You have a laugh that feels contagious to everyone around you. You have a smile that lights up any room you enter. You have a big heart that cares for others. You have a soul that searches to be understood. You have a gaze that looks deep into others and helps them to feel seen.

You have a mind that works in the most creative ways, that tell jokes, compliments, thoughts and more. Your mind is far more attractive than your body ever could be. Your mind allows you to connect with people and express everything you think about. Your mind allows people to feel heard, seen and understood. Your mind is your energy; your mind is your currency.

Your body isn’t as interesting as the rest of that. Your body isn’t what pulls people to you, nor will it ever be what keeps them. Instead, your body is a vessel to do so much more. Your body is a vehicle for all the wonder that you carry.

You don’t need to be loved for your body because that wouldn’t do you justice. That would ignore all the wonderful parts of you, things that are so much more important than the size on the label of your jeans or the stretch marks that caress your thighs. You have more to offer the world than your body, so don’t settle for less. Your body is beautiful in whatever shape or form, because your body allows you to do so much. It enables you to run and dance, to sing and cry, to love and be loved.

Your body is how you love and how you’re loved in return, it is not the reason for that love.