One topic I really want to dig deeper into on here is my relationship journey with my own body. I am in a healthy place with my body today, but I haven’t always had a healthy relationship with my body & with food. As many of you know, I was born with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, & since childhood it has been something that made me ashamed of my body for what I thought wasn’t “normal”. In fact, I hated it. I remember the day I wore my back brace to PE in elementary school for the first time and a classmate felt my brace underneath my clothing and I was sooooo ashamed. I actually never wore my brace to school again after that.

At the age of 15 I was diagnosed with anorexia, and it was the lowest point of my life. I remember quite clearly my way of thinking and my habits back then, and how my family was very much affected by them. And I remember it started after I got back from a trip to visit modeling agencies in NYC, and being very harshly denied. It affected me quite deeply, and I remember crying so hard on that trip, looking in the mirror seeing only something ugly and I said I never wanted to go back to NYC again. Looking back, without a doubt this experience mixed with internal issues stemming from my own self inflicted body negativity and the general pressure to fit into a perfect mold as a female in all aspects of life added up and controlled me, even though I thought I was the one in control. I became a perfectionist to the max. Everything around me had to feel in my control. I counted absolutely everything, down to the smallest bit of food on my plate to the number of sit ups or laps across the pool I did. It was mentally and physically exhausting but I thrived off of this control. I remembered my skin was so dry. My joints started to hurt. And I would easily become short of breath. My mom cried countless times over me. I was not even 16 yet.

I think the lack of control I had over my spinal situation mixed with my lower self esteem, the unease over the transition into adulthood, and not to mention the magazines that showed me what I thought I should look like were what drove me to dramatically seek control. Food was so easy for me to control at the time. Every pound lost was a checkmark. And to think, this was far before I started using Instagram and all these sorts of apps. It makes me think about what the young girls today must be going through. As women, we are being bombarded with images of perfection and a total and complete bullshit hierarchy system of what is deemed beautiful dictated for us by a close-minded society. Even today, I still face these sorts of insecurities, but l’ve learned to be stronger than them because I can never forget what it was like to be at the very bottom of it and it is not worth it to ever put myself through that again.

I could go even deeper into my experience now, but I just want to make the point that most of the time, as women, it is never an easy path for us to come to love ourselves and to grow into women who feel strong, confident and empowered in our own bodies in a way that is healthy, happy and soul feeding. I feel like after an experience like this, one is always in a continuous process of healing, but I’m happy to say that where I am now physically and mentally is exactly where I want and need to be. I have learned so much about the relationship I have with my body and why I must treat it so well, and why I want to be an advocate for body empowerment especially amongst women.

This scar on my back, a result of my scoliosis surgery at 18, represents a long time of healing; the closure of a fight to free myself from the control I pressured myself to have over my body. Without my scoliosis, what actually began as something that made me hate parts of myself came to be what saved me … what showed me why it was so important to stay strong and treat my body like a temple because my life depended on it. I feel strong today, but it sure took a fight to get to this place, but it was worth it. I want to share more about my experience of recovery here to hopefully help others who may need to hear it.

Didn’t have the brain capacity to post on International Women’s Day as I was stuck for hours on an idling plane in Dallas, but I wanted to say how much I appreciate all the women in my life. I appreciate how many different kinds of strengths, personalities, goals and perspectives I get to see in action every day. How we all have our unique talents and unique insecurities and unique ways of how we all go through life. Seeing this is the most miraculous thing. The pressure our society puts on us women to mold us is a heavy thing. I feel it everyday in my industry, outside my industry, within family, from strangers on the street, in the media. Even from other women. Sometimes I just feel like exploding with the amount of things I feel like I have to do to feel worthy of just BEING never ends when all I really want is to be content RIGHT NOW. Especially when it comes to decisions on my body. We all have the right to live our lives without judgment and to feel safe both physically and mentally. I know I have it much easier with the privilege of access and support that I have in life and that many of the women I know personally have, but then I also know that standing up and bending over backwards for all women is critical. Because what is mine is also OURS. Even if it’s just these thoughts today to remind you too look in the mirror and really SEE every part of what you are; the most barest parts, the parts you adore, the parts you are most sensitive about, the parts others make you feel low about, the parts of yourself that YOU decide to change with the intention to better serve yourself so you can better serve the world in your own small but significant way. We are no perfect beings, but we who identify as women deserve the respect to call our own shots. Love you all!

I didn’t make resolutions this year, as per usual, but I did have the urge to write more this year, since I feel like I fell off the routine of putting down my thoughts into tangles of sentences, and it has left a part of me feeling unfulfilled. I’ve been craving words, especially the ones that don’t really make a lot of sense. Most things we feel make absolutely no sense and since I’ve been trying harder to not force myself to make sense of every aspect of my life as to not stress myself out, these nonsensical feelings feel like a comfort to me. Weird I know, but true.

So I thought to myself, maybe I just need a new platform that will help me put this urge into action. I do share my writing on Instagram here and there when the feeling comes over me, but it isn’t as consistent as it used to be. I started following a few Substacks by fellow content creators and I felt moved by their desire to share their intimate and personal experiences on a public platform that doesn’t rely on perfectly filtered selfies that only show our best angles or beautifully colored inspiration pictures that relentlessly give us FOMO. For some reason, in-depth essays feel scarier than a caption on Instagram. But at the same time, this reason is the push that I need. Anyways, I contemplated the platform Substack, but since my website has been here for years, I don’t want to give it up and keep it as a space where I can write without a set purpose in mind except to feel good, to feel relief, to feel nostalgic, to feel excited, to feel like I’m not forgetting to breathe. And hopefully this new routine can help myself navigate some parts of my life that sometimes I feel like my job as a content creator doesn’t leave me much time for. And in turn, I hope I can at least in some way help others who happen to stumble here find a place where they can form a connection or take something away positively.

I thought I’d take my first set of words of the year that was originally posted on Instagram here. Maybe because I’m lazy, maybe because I feel like re-reading what I’ve written, maybe because I want to see if my perspective has changed since this post. I don’t know why, but it feels like those thoughts I had at the beginning of the year need a place here to kick things off . . .

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What a year full of soul serving changes. Instead of writing out my resolutions for next year, I’m still continuing to think about the intentional challenges that I set in action this past year to free myself from some the aspects of my life that I felt didn’t serve my soul the way it should. Because of my job and the way our society is set up, a lot of my sense of self worth and value as a young adult came from my career … how much I worked, how much money I made and saved, and how much I am putting myself out there, doing and showcasing on social media. And while it has taken me the past few years to start letting go of the parts of this mindset that didn’t lift me up, it really wasn’t until this past year that I felt much more balance and harmony with the path I have chosen for my life. I made a very strong decision to not sacrifice my mental health, stamina and boundaries to feel worthy in any sense. To not overexert and give too much of myself without reason. To not allow my career to drown out my personal passions or turn me into a content robot. To not allow my happiness to be defined by numbers. To come to terms with the fact that I cannot do it all and, well, why should I? To continue to get close to what gives me honest meaning and inspiration.

To be honest, I don’t know exactly what my 5 year or 10 year plan is, heck I don’t know what the next two years hold as Gabi and I are considering the possibility of moving to a new city or living in between two cities we love. There is a lot of freedom in this feeling of not knowing right in this moment what is next, where say 6 years ago that idea of not knowing was the scariest sort of thing. In a way, getting to this point in my life has been the lifelong resolution I didn’t know that I needed so much.

This past year we celebrated so much. Gabi got his green card and we dedicated time to much more intentional travel, I worked on many amazing projects that didn’t stifle my creativity or give me an overwhelming amount of long term stress, I got to see my family a lot and continue to work with my sister, my Portuguese has approved even if just by a little, and I feel like I’ve become so much more in tune with what is happening all over the world than ever before. These are just a few of the things. Experiences like this really can shape you in even a short amount of time. I’m so grateful for these experiences and for what every year before has given me. Happy New Year, and what Gabi and I said last night after the ball fell in Time’s Square … “Happy new hour, happy new minute, happy new second, happy new millisecond.” Thanks for letting me share some personal thoughts with you.