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A Letter from the Managing Editor: "Free Yourself to Be Yourself"

By Jenny Steadman June 8, 2018

I love publishing this newsletter. I spend the month gathering content, taking suggestions from you and putting together information to help you and your family on your path to wellness. This monthly column is to let you know I am here with you! I'm a mom with young children and a crazy schedule; I don't get enough sleep and have trouble eating well. We are in this together and, as a team, we can improve our lives, our families, and our communities. 

Listen up, ladies and gents. I'm about to really lay down the personal. Something just short of a miracle has happened. I have truly started loving myself where I am right now. 

"What?" you ask. "But, Jenny, you preach this to us all the time!" you exclaim. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk is another, my friends. I have been on a major health journey the last decade and while I thought it was all about the physical body as well as the mental, it turns out I was in the wrong headspace. 

I have worried for so long about what I eat, how much I exercise and the number on the scale that I forgot about my true self, what really makes up me and what really matters. A few weeks ago I threw it all out. The baby and the bathwater. It had been all-consuming. I didn't realize how restricted I had made my life. By "restrictive" I don't mean my diet, though that's in there, too. I mean my frame of mind towards my own health. 

After a few weeks of not worrying about every bite I put in my mouth, doing workouts that I wanted to do when I want to do them and going out with girlfriends without feeling guilty, everything has changed. I looked at myself in the mirror the other day and say, "Hot damn! I look good!" Despite the fact that I'm a different size and shape than I have ever been, I looked at myself and truly loved what I saw, inside and out. 

I don't know how to help you get there other than to keep preaching my personal mantra, "free yourself to be yourself." (Not my original words. I have Bono to thank for those.) Just keep repeating that to yourself and I hope one day you, too, can love yourself where you are. If you are already there, mad props to you, my friend. Mad props! 

All my love to you, 

Jenny