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A post shared by Salma El-Wardany (@salmaelwardany) on Jul 31, 2019 at 2:00pm PDT

You’re not always going to love it.

Some days you will despise it. You’ll grab the softest parts of yourself and say the hardest things.

Your tongue will beat lashings across your skin as you berate your body for not being beautiful enough.

You’re not always going to love it.

It’s taken me years of work to pull out the splinters I’ve sunk into my skin and every now and then I still find some I’ve missed.

I still stare at Instagram accounts before asking my stomach why it isn’t flatter.

I still look through the photoshopped images in magazines and although my brain knows it isn’t real, my body has a muscle memory of hatred and it pulls up its own self-loathing in the time it takes me to turn the page.

What I’m saying is, it’s hard. Self-love is a full-time job and sometimes you’re too tired, too beaten, too rejected, and too disheartened to do the work that needs to be done.

You pray for an easier life and a better body.

You trick yourself into believing a better body will give you an easier life.

You’re not always going to love it. And that’s okay. But on the days that you do…celebrate it. Take the pictures. Write about it. Rejoice in it.

And on the days that you don’t, remember that tomorrow brings a new dawn, which means you’ll have another chance at doing it. And practice makes perfect.

You just need a little more practice, that’s all. We’re forming the habits of a lifetime, and these things take time.

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Photo by @youatyours who helped me love this body of mine during a time I didn’t love it as much as I should have.

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