Confident You started as a post series idea to help people increase, even if a teeny tiny bit, the amount of confidence they have in a short and snappy 28 day format. You know the whole 28 days to change a habit thing? Well that. From there there content just arrived time after time after time. An eBook was suggested and became a mammoth task choosing what to include, not include and what new content to add.
And each time I would share or write it was a personal challenge, I’d tackle those old lessons again. As I wrote about how to feel good in your own skin, to confidently handle you body and well-being I felt exposed and judged. It called into the present the very feelings I was writing about. And it became a personal battle for me.
I hear that happens to other writers too, when you write about lessons learned, sometimes it cements them and sometimes you find yourself relearning them again. Funny how life works.
So sometimes I stop writing them. I stop tackling the challenges in life head on because I feel like I just can’t face a hurdle like that again. But it’s never for long. Reliving these lessons strengthens them in my gut rather than just a knowing in my head. When someone says ‘how can you be so confident’ I know automatically the answer.
How could I not? I’m a freakin’ miracle.
But it wasn’t always this way. I have used and abused myself and on rare occasion allowed others to do so too. That’s why I wonder about and worry for the young women today. Did anyone tell them about confidence, about body love and pride? I was asked the other day how I came to feel so strongly about teenage girls, their participation online and what they need to know before they make the choices they would inevitably make. A topic I will talk for HOURS about if you let me. Literally.
I don’t know about you but I have been a teenage girl and it was hard work. And that was before life was lived so hugely online, before the pressures of all the internet brings had gained force. But I know, I feel the pressure intensely sometimes myself and barely scrape through with my morals intact as a grown woman. I feel for those girls.
My nieces come to stay with me in the coming weeks and will stay for a few days so we can bond while they are on holidays. So I can look them in the eyes and ask them if they are doing okay, what’s happening and maybe teach them a thing or two about life as I know it. It got me thinking and toying with the idea of writing a short and sweet eBook {with my nieces perhaps} for teenage girls. To empower them to live their lives in this world we live in.
As the words on this page, the ones that make up this post, jump from one thought to another and I hope someone somewhere can pick up what I’m putting down as I start to hatch a plan. A plan for girls, for women and for all those who never had the opportunity to question what it is to be a woman in this world. Those of us who took this step after the other into life not pausing a moment to ask why society is the way it is and why we are the way we are in it.
I want to write something just for them. So I can be heard and they can hear themselves in me. To share that life, love, growing up, reaching for your dreams and protecting yourself while being open is all possible. Because my struggles are your struggles. We share this experience of being female even if our generations and situations change.
I smile and my cold nose crinkles. It’s the wee hours of the morning now, my toes are chilled to the bone through my slippers and my hoodie doesn’t seem to contain my body’s heat like it did earlier. But forget all that, I have a plan. A purpose.
I exhale slowly and decide this post is done. It’s time to sleep. After all there’s a lot to be done tomorrow. Lots to do. Lots to see. Lots to have. I have a plan and it feels like the right one for me. And don’t worry, the original Confident You collection isn’t dead, it’s underway as we speak. Final draft time. Finally.
Would that eBook be of use to you or a girl you know?
What was your greatest challenge growing up? Does it still hang around you now?
Hi! I’m Melissa Walker Horn. Around here, they call me Suger. I’m the Chief Blogger and doer of all the things here at Suger Coat It. Blogging since 1901; I love a casual ootd, taking photos, and writing about things that irk or inspire me. I love wine and cheese, long days at the beach and spending time with my family. I make stuff for the internet over at Chalkboard Digital. You know, living the sweet life.
I LOVE the idea of this eBook! I don’t really know many teenage girls at the moment but having once been one myself I can safely say that I would have LOVED to have been able to have something like that when I was going through it all. Connecting with other people has done wonders for my own confidence and body image, seeing that we are all the same and that no one is perfect but that we can and should all love ourselves anyway. It’s a powerful message I’ve come to learn thanks to ladies like you. So eBook? YES! Although I will say this, it has to be a habit. Reading one thing that one time might make you feel good for a little while but it’s easy to forget it or discount it as one person’s ‘opinion’. Having been fed the wrong ideas by the media for so long, it takes a habit of regularly consuming media that counteracts that to really start to make a difference, a real shift in yourself that you can feel and actually believe in.
Thank you lovely. It’s so important to connect and I think as a teenager your really buy into the idea that you are all alone. That no-one knows and that no-one has been through what you have been through. Even if i can tell them it’s not true for a moment, that will be worth it.
Your comment about habit gave me the idea of incorporating a mantro/motto screen wallpaper or something as part of the download… Stuff like that to keep the thoughts present.
Looking back, I’d have to say that knowing “This too, shall pass” & “It’s OK NOT to know what the fuck to do on occasions” were really my greatest challenges. That and being the only (well it seemed like it!) girl in school who was skipped over by the b( Y )bs fairy in high school.
I was once told to “fake it till you make it” and that advice always stood me in good stead – sometimes manifesting as confidence, sometimes overconfidence, but always seemed to work put in the end.
I was a teenager in a time when we were still just learning to stand up for ourselves, to ask a boy out instead of waiting and hoping, to sit by the phone praying it would ring (and not be another call for your mum!). Our adventures (and misadventures) became the stuff of family legends and the outsiders who knew about your stuff ups soon forgot because there were no digital images to continually haunt you.
My own teenage girls are far more savvy and yet far more protected about the world. The challenges are the same, just the packaging changes.
Write from your heart Suger (as I know you will), and you’ll nail it!
Thank you Kelly. This is the best. It gives me a great place to start. I hear you, each generation has their challenges and things to overcome. If I can share my experience online and help these young ladies out in some way then I will. Stand by, I may do a survey at some stage and I’d love your input.
My greatest challenge was self love and acceptance. It’s something I still battle with today – if I’m honest, more so than I ever did when I was younger.
When I was younger, I had more of a “I can’t be fucked attitude” and that manifested itself into confidence. I didn’t love myself or accept myself but my god I was confident regardless. Now, despite being older and generally wiser, I’m still confident – I hold myself well in public, I’m not shy in coming forwards and I don’t let others talk to me like shit – but yet, yet, I still allow myself to talk crap about myself and can’t seem to either stop myself from doing it OR pull myself up on it. If someone else was talking the crap about me that I do to myself on such a regular basis, I’d have kicked their arse by now, so why can’t I kick my own?
p.s. I think the young girls of today can do with all the help they can get, it was tough growing up when we did, it’s tougher now. I would hate to be a teen today with social media as prevalent as it is – it sometimes feels like there’s no escape.
p.p.s. You’re so freakin hot in this photo, that I’m swaying between crushing on you and hating you 😛 x
Why indeed my friend? I sometimes think the fake it until you make it can be the best and worst of advice. How long do you fake it before you make it? How long until you get to the bottom of things.
p.s. I agree, I think that’s why I keep coming back to it. I feel like with the insights from blogging, combined with this determination to speak to them. I don’t know, I feel like I could help.
p.p.s. HA. Love your guts lady!