Throughout history, women’s bodies have been as wronged as they have been worshipped. Medicine, politics, religion, and social conditioning have created many falsehoods that still negatively impact us today. Since launching The Happy Vagina podcast in 2019 I have been on a mission to make sure as many women as possible know the truth about their bodies, so they can feel exceptional in them. As my book of the podcast is released, here are some ways to start building that self-esteem:
Anger
Anger is a useful emotion and one that women have often been denied due to that aforementioned social conditioning. When you are born with a voice but consistently discouraged from using it, it is not uncommon for this voice to turn on its owner and, in a paradoxical effort to protect, become an internalized critic and source of much psychic angst. Regardless of whether those messages were transmitted by your family or not, they were almost definitely reinforced by society. If you feel angry, there is likely a reason for it. Let it out. Then let it go. Why? Because sitting on a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Sitting on it will negatively impact both your mental and physical health. Finding forgiveness does not mean that you forget or are pretending that something didn’t happen, or even that you have to have that person or people in your life. It is a private experience, inside of yourself, that will enable you to be free, to stay wild.
Smash shame
You’ve heard the expression – you are only as sick as your secrets – right? This is because the things that we keep to ourselves, fearing other humans won’t understand, will judge us or, worse, not love us, can become the fulcrum around which negative emotions pivot and, in the worst case scenario, start to impact our life choices. The best self-care love lesson we can do for ourselves is eliminate our shame. Make sure that you have one person in your life you have told absolutely everything to; someone you trust, who champions you and does not judge.
STAY OPEN-MINDED
One of the greatest challenges as we grow into adults is to remain curious and open-minded. Rational and fear-based thinking takes over as we go through life and experience loss and trauma, but a life without judgement will set you free to achieve your goals. Why? Because no one, NO ONE, who judges other people is free from judging themselves
THOUGHTS ARE NOT FACTS
So learn to let go of the unhelpful ones. It’s very likely that, in our attempt to persuade you to think about some of your positive qualities, your mind is already coming up with excuses; how some of those good things that you have thought of ‘don’t count’, or someone ‘only said that to be kind’, ‘they didn’t mean it’, ‘they wanted something’... Notice that this is your mind still trying to defend its own prejudice against itself.
WEAR THE DAMN SHORTS
Feeling ‘unfeminine’, ‘unsexy’ or ‘too large’ as a woman is a form of body dysmorphia that has been imposed on us. It grew out of society’s need to keep us small. In no uncertain terms, size stigma and dieting is society’s modern-day corset, invented to keep us small. We are not small, or medium, or large. We are women; we come in all shapes and all sizes and we are perfect just as we are. So, fuck diets
Mika Simmons is an actress and director, and host of The Happy Vagina podcast, now a book published by Pavilion out now
