“Beauty has so many forms, and I think the most beautiful thing is confidence and loving yourself.”

F

or the most part of my life, I struggled a lot with self-confidence and acceptance. Growing up, I was always taught by the females in my family that outer beauty was everything and if you didn’t have it, then no one would want to be with you and even possibly be around you. You can imagine how hard that sounds, especially to me! When I was a kid, I was a bit chubby and had frizzy lion hair, and I was always super tanned. I don’t blame my family because I grew up in a South East Asian household (where I was the first Australian born generation), but if you were chubby, frizzy and tanned then you definitely stood out. South East Asians envy skinny bodies with straight sleek hair and pale white skin, because that was the standard of beauty that they were taught.

This fact, and the surrounding media pushing beauty standards onto females, made everything hard to digest. I was never happy with how I looked, I always found a way to judge myself whether it would be my features or my weight – I tried a lot when I was younger to lose weight or to permanently straighten my hair just so I can fit the definition of their beauty. This caused me to fall into a deep spiral of self-hatred and insecurity, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted!

When I was started blogging, I could never stare at the camera when taking my photos just because I was that insecure of looking at the person taking the photo and having to see photos of my whole face with nothing to hide. It’s a fact! You can scroll through the first 100 photos on my feed and nothing will come up! I contorted my face in poses that would make my chin look skinnier and big forehead look smaller so people didn’t have to see the ‘real me’ because I was so upset at how I looked. But as time passed, and blogging became more comfortable, I started seeing my own version of beautiful. It sounds crazy that it could change my life like that but when you’re staring at your face 24/7 in photos, you can either become confident or be stuck in hatred, and I chose the former. You see, the only way you can be a blogger is if you can truly accept you for your beautiful and then illuminate it to the rest of the world. The reason why I share things with you guys is because I love it, and hope you love it too. If I don’t love myself, why would anyone else?

It’s not being conceited and saying that I’m addicted to my looks, but it means I now radiate acceptance for myself from the inside, out. And I couldn’t have done it alone. There were many people who made me believe in myself – blogging wasn’t the only thing. In fact, surrounding myself with people who supported me through everything and had nothing but love to give, made me truly be, me. And that was when I started to see something more than just a girl whose ‘looks’ defined her beauty. All of the negative traits I once thought of myself, I now have learnt to love and embrace the difference, because it’s what sets me apart from others, and in fact, it’s what other people like about me, too.

It took me a while to understand what it means to find a happy medium in accepting yourself. And believe me, it will always be an eternal struggle. On some days, I’m entirely happy being me, but on other days, the insecurities and fears come crawling back and I feel like the helpless little girl again. We will never truly be free from them, but it’s accepting that is simply is who we are, and loving ourselves regardless, that makes the journey all the worthwhile ♡ ♡

A whole lot of love,

Eli xx