Pride series part #3- Representation

        I didn't understand how much representation mattered, and I used to think it was overrated. I believe this had more to do with the fact I didn't know and accept who I was both with my disability and sexuality. I'm not saying that representation doesn't exist-especially in the LGBTQ+ but I never saw it, was exposed to it. Honestly, for years I didn't even know that these identities were a reality. When I finally met someone in my life who is lesbian it opened the world for me, it took me some time to get to the world, but I learned of its existence. Here is the third installment of my pride series, two posts on representation and how it impacted my life.

        I loved watching sports and playing sports way before I understood I was gay. Sports gave me a place to use the abilities I had to move my body as best as possible within my disability, while also giving me an emotional safe haven that just got larger through the years. The first time I went to an adaptive sports camp-and the only time unfortunately I remember it being the first step in loving my body and what it could do.  The older I got and more exposed to watching and following women's leagues and the reality of LGBTQ athletes, it gave me a space in which I already felt comfortable (watching and playing sports) to explore the athletes and their identities and in doing so taking locked away feelings that I felt I was completely alone and just weren't an actual thing and actually seeing how normal it was even if in the circles of society I lived in didn't allow for it. Sports didn't make me gay, they just gave me a space to figure it out and to feel not alone. When I came back from living in Florida for a year for rowing, I was finally starting to acknowledge and process my identity. Before I actually understood how many LGBTQ athletes were in the female leagues and felt that sense of community in a much larger sense I spoke to the only out lesbian athlete I knew, Moran. Her being out actually sparked a really messed up interaction between my mother, an old therapist and me but that's another story, she was willing to sit with me and just give me a space to process and question the journey and the normalcy of it all. While it may seem like a small interaction  I think we met for coffee just twice to discuss the topic, the ability she had to hold space for me, and answer questions but also just to reassure me that I was far from alone on my journey and that things do get easier. The WNBA became a safe haven for me, I remember it was Elena Delle Donne who was the first athlete I found, because of her sister with cerebral palsy, and then seeing pictures of her wedding, it became something that was real. Somehow just knowing how many queer women in the WNBA and in soccer, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapino, and others, I didn't feel crazy anymore. Writing this out I actually remember an interaction I had in 5th grade when I wanted to play sports with the boys from my class on the grass and an older boy yelled out “why do you want to play sports with us, you gay or something?” I didn't understand at the moment what he meant and the recess monitor didn't let me go into the yard anyway. Could I love sports and be super involved and not be gay, yea sure, did sports make me gay, no I was born this way, sports just gave me a space to feel safe and not alone.

       NANOWRIMO posted these pictures of books on pride flags, and it reminded me what I wish I had access to as a child and even as a young adult, books that made me feel not alone. Books that put into words and stories of a world which growing up I didn't even know existed. There are books for young adults and I had a computer with internet as a teen but I didn't have any internal vocabulary for which to search and realize I wasn't alone. Later on, there was an internal process that happened once I found lgbtq+ literature of different types, ones that helped me process and understand feelings. Different books became manuals and personal Bible's to my coming out story and life. The latest one that has turned into a personal bible with pages of handwritten notes on the book is Untamed by Glennon Doyle, her process of coming out later in life made me feel so seen and that I wasn't behind in life, along with just so many life lessons and words to live by. Words have the power to make others feel seen and I hope my writing can be that for someone else.

Pride Series part #2- Self love

Self-love has been such a long and arduous journey for me, and I have yet to get to a place I think of full self-love, but I am also not sure a place like that exists. I do know that on my journey of coming out and accepting my inner pride has many different facets and these different moments and facets of my journey build me into the puzzle that I am. Here is part two of my pride series,self-love.

Haircuts: the first time I cut my hair short I was actually super nervous, I was in Pittsburgh and moving to Florida the next day and I was speaking to a friend Mushky and I had kinda wanted to go short “to make showers faster and easier" but didn't understand to what extent it was something deeper. I remember some of the first responses I got from family friends they were all similar wording "it makes you look gay". Of course, this was my start of the journey in Florida and really had no idea what that even meant and didn't really get the anger and disappointment conveyed in the statement. I did notice that along with the physical weight that was removed from my head there was a mental and emotional change I felt when looking in the mirror. I started feeling calmer looking in the mirror and I actually started to like looking in the mirror. I've always had different body issues from my disability, chronic pain, and other issues, and cutting my hair short really helped me feel like me. The evolution of the cuts from the first one in Pittsburgh and the few in Florida, to the one with my grandmother. I came back to Israel and grew my hair out again thinking I needed to, to look a certain way for a very close friend's wedding, while I felt more like myself with my short hair but I still felt like I owed family and friends a certain version of me. After the wedding and cutting it all off again,I also finally came out and went on a more extreme shave, shape, and color journey searching for my hair to explain to the internal me who I was. Don't get me wrong I loved every haircut for the different lessons I learned during the time period in my life that I had that haircut. It sounds cliche even to my own ears to say this latest haircut I got this past Sunday is my favorite, but that of course is true but more so to do with where I'm at mentally with internal self-love and acceptance. And yes, I love the fact that my hair so clearly states to society a part of who I am, I use a wheelchair and that tells society what other community I'm part of and I love that my hair, another part of me conveys me to the world.


Body image and acceptance. TW: binge-eating disorder. I had a magical moment with myself in the mirror when for the first time ever I looked up and I automatically smiled at myself and felt at home in my body. I'm pretty sure that has never happened before. There was a calm in the smile, I didn't rush to complain to myself about the fat around my face or other rolls and imperfections. What does this have to do with pride month? I have struggled with a binge eating disorder for many years, and I got inpatient treatment now three years ago, while I worked on changing my habits, I still continuously felt like I needed to fill this black hole of self-loathing and I was still fighting myself on my sexuality. Now I have been working on recovery from my eating disorder and it's going hand in hand with learning to love all the aspects of myself. While I already accepted my disability at about 21 I've seen the more I embrace and love my body and sexuality and all aspects of my body, I'm not constantly trying to hurt my body to get it "inline" with social demands and rather my own self-love. I noticed this change when I decided to weigh myself at my sports center, it had been over two months and I try to just keep up with my weight, non obsessively of course. For once when I stood on the scale I didn't feel like I was checking my worth and if I could love myself, I already did and I didn't have the panicked thoughts of should've eaten less the past week. Tallying the number, I've managed to lose 25 pounds over the past 7 months. While the first thought that came back eating disorder style was "is that enough? How much are you supposed to lose?" But the powerful prideful inner warrior shot back with "that's great have you seen what your life has been these past several months, you're doing this in a healthy way, and you aren't losing weight to convince yourself to love who you are." That pride and power that my inner warrior has found has been a lot to do with removing lots of internal shame regarding my sexuality and how my body looks and wishing parts of it were not there. Removing those layers of shame, some of which are still there for sure have given me so much internal peace without needing to focus on a number on the scale for self-love. I love my body, my disability, my sexuality, and ultimately myself all the parts of me. Here's to learning to deeply love all of yourself the changes are magical.

Clothing- Clothing has been the silent but deadly hurdle I keep putting in front of myself claiming I have good excuses for why I don’t let myself dress in a way that feels authentic to myself. My inspiration board on Pinterest is filled with outfits I wish I’d let myself wear, and then my fearful mind unrolls the laundry list of excuses as to why I don’t need to be myself completely.  Pain, physical pain my brain's biggest hurdle it sets up first on the race to being myself is chronic pain even before the disability. The formal androgynous looks you want to wear, the jackets,button-downs, and pants they will enhance your chronic pain. I have internalized this so deeply I don’t even consciously think about it most of the time, but when I have a day I am internally struggling with my sexuality and gender, instead of wearing the few plaid shirts and jeans I feel express myself I wear shift dresses and disappear in the fabric. Another hurdle my brain sets up is about waste. Why waste the clothes you have, why get rid of them, when you need new clothes when you lose weight you can get new clothes. Why waste the money and space buying new and keeping or getting rid of the old. The sister hurdle to this is definitely how my mother reacted when she asked me if I wanted any clothes from a consignment shop and I asked for a men's suit jacket and some dress shirts. The silence suffocated ever feeling comfortable in clothes I internally am screaming to wear. This only enhanced the silence I had told myself that after graduating high school and wearing uniform shirts which were buttoned down and unflattering that I would never wear button-downs again. I didn’t even realize how much this was bothering me until this month of writing posts and there was this huge internal block I couldn't figure out.I’m yelling I am my authentic self to the world but every time I do laundry or open my closet to get dressed every morning, except for a few button-down shirts and jeans the swaths of fabric I suffocate my identity in, choking me.  I haven’t worked out this fear and even thinking about getting rid of all the clothes I hate wearing freaks me out, here's to doing things that scare you, so maybe this summer an actual closet purge will happen, and I’ll let myself shine proudly. I'm not sure why accepting and embracing this part of expressing my gender and identity is so hard. But, here's to doing things that scare you, so maybe this summer an actual closet purge will happen, and I’ll let myself shine in my skin and clothe it proudly.

Pride series: Part #1 Religion

I wasn't planning on writing these posts. My plan for pride month was to finally put my full authentic self out into the world by going to the pride parades and posting pictures. Then the pandemic hit and everything was rightfully canceled, so instead, I decided to share my authentic self with others the best way I know, through words. I wanted the first of the pride series on my blog to be about my struggles with religion and my lgbtq+ identity as religion was one of the biggest forms of my struggle with understanding and accepting my true self. I left each post on its own while putting it in an order to hopefully create a narrative. This is very much my first draft and what feels like my first layers of expressing my internal turmoil that I have come to understand more. These posts were originally Instagram posts, during June which is Pride month, where I tried to process and share my journey. I collected them in a series to share on my blog in four parts. I would love to hear feedback and dialogue on these. There is both darkness and light as life is always comprised of both. I hope this can help someone feel ok in their own skin, and create dialogue for people outside of the lgbtq+ community. 

Religion and I struggled before I figured out I was gay. I lost most of my belief back in fourth grade and it just kept dwindling over the years. In 10th grade I was living in a girl's dorm in a religious girl's high school it was a very religious environment. I couldn't label and understand forget to embrace the emotions. So I turned to texts and friends and spent my time learning whatever with whomever. When close friends asked me what was wrong and I couldn't put my fingers on it the response understandably to cut out the few guy friends I had. It didn't solve anything, how could it solve an issue I couldn't even figure out. I gave up trying to "pray-rather learn the gay away" without even fully understanding I was trying to do that. I did this again in seminary trying to somehow learn something that would explain away my feelings. I kept searching for something to explain away my feelings. I kept searching for something in religion, that I was taught was all-knowing, and the truth for something to explain what I didn't have words to explain to myself. Once I was given the external vocabulary and the internal unlocking a lot of my favorite internal anger against religion and God dissipated. I haven't fully figured out my relationship with God and religion but is my honest and true self has made it possible to come back to sit at the table with God in my own way. This is a long term struggle that I have not fully figured out in any way but I am in conversation with God, it looks different every day but bringing my authentic self to the table has been empowering and given a chance for an authentic relationship with God and the universe.

Weddings - weddings are a big part of Judaism especially for women and girls it is one of the biggest milestones you are conditioned to want and to have as your goal. I remember when I was 8 I dressed up as a bride for Purim. A family member sewed me a dress and I had fake flowers and a veil. Luckily in the community, it's super normal so no-one asked me about a groom but I remember seeing other girls my age also dressing up as brides and thinking I want that. Of course, I thought that I was just thinking about their dress or veil not realizing the deeper thoughts till thinking about it now. After graduating from high school in my religious school with a grade of 150 girls, weddings naturally were the next milestone. I had gone to a decent amount of weddings during high school of family friends and older friends and there always was this internal feeling of uncomfortable and struggling to just be happy at the weddings, I always felt I didn't belong and I wasn't very outwardly religious and didn't believe in their version of God so I thought it was just from religious conflicts. I remember always looking down the aisle waiting for my friend to come down, and I could imagine myself walking down the aisle, but there was never a clear picture of the “man of my dreams” waiting at the end of the aisle, it was always blurry and blank. Then with the help of a few statements from my good friend, enough of my internal feelings, emotions, and thoughts came together and I came out of the closet to myself. I remember going to the first wedding after I came out, and having a very powerful moment waiting for the couple to walk down the aisle, and looking at the canopy and being able to envision my own wedding and being under that canopy with the woman of my dreams. The joy and emotions I was able to express with my friends absolutely came from that internal level of peace and now I love going to weddings, I can feel part and connected even if I want something different than what is shown, I have found that internal compass, and it feels amazing. Finding my authentic self made sharing in others joy so much more authentic.

Internal safe space part #1- (TW: suicidal thoughts) NOT SAFE- Building an internal safe space has been one of the hardest things about coming out and looking back over the very long process it took has been quite intense and remembering how much I already knew but didn't even have a space inside myself to hear the voices in my head has been painful and healing at the same time. 10th grade was one of the best and worst years of my life. The best I was finally out of Ramat Bet Shemesh living in a dorm of international religious girls, on a school campus I actually wanted to go to. I had made friends both in my class and the dorms but, it was also one of the hardest years of my life. I remember it being one of the first times I was in a safe enough space to feel those internal confusing thoughts yet I didn't understand what the crushes and attraction meant. I remember trying to talk to a close friend but not even having the right words all I had was so much confusion and pain, a good Jewish girl like her thought it was boy trouble since I was friends with a barn hand from where I used to ride and we were in touch. So I used the tool I had been using all year, religion, and clinging closer to some version of God that would get rid of my internal strife if I stopped talking to boys. Unfortunately, that didn't solve any problems it just made me feel more isolated and confused, to the point where one night I was leaning out the window and looking down at the ground, analyzing that I wouldn’t die from the jump but maybe it would still get rid of the internal confusion and self-hatred from that confusion. I would look out into the night through those big windows often but that was one of my most intense times I felt the only way to fix whatever was broken inside, was to break my outside. Luckily (yes now I can look back and say luckily) a friend came into the room and asked if I wanted to learn some Torah thought and since that was the only tool I had I used it and kept hoping it would fix what I couldn’t inside. I didn't find my internal safe space to even find the words to portray my feelings of homosexuality or even really know it existed for years, but this is just part one of not having an internal safe space to even learn and think about the letters LGBTQ+.

Internal safe spaces NOT SAFE part 2. In the summer between 10th and 11th grade I found the now-defunct women's wheelchair basketball team, it was an important addition to my physical therapy but also brought to light how I was not in an emotionally safe space to talk about being lesbian. My mother has always been quite into matchmaking so on the way back from picking me up from the train station when I came back from practice in tel Aviv, one afternoon she asked about the captain of the team Moran, and if she was single. I was so naive and didn't think I needed to filter my response (also I've only in the past four years learned to filter better) so I just responded "um, she's not single her wife even comes to practice. You might have even met her " Luckily I had enough of a filter to not tell her, that her wife was one of the organizers. The slice of silence that returned is still burned in my mind I can tell you exactly where the thirty-second interaction happened. The interaction between us ended then and I naively once again thought that would be the end of the conversation. Instead at my next therapy session my religious therapist (which I then dropped two months later) asked me how I knew what gay was and if I was fine with people who were gay, and in the same breath if I was gay. Feeling cornered without missing a beat I responded "I'm fine with gay people but don't worry I'm not gay" I remember her asking how I knew what gay was and to be honest I don't know if I actually knew I just saw them together and knew they were together, but I really don't think I really had enough information to understand. I just mostly remember how cornered and how quickly that therapist's office turned from being a safe space to a surrogate parent interrogation space. I still feel that pain of being cornered and having no safe space, and recounting these events makes me super impressed with myself to still be alive and actually understand, accept, love and share my authentic self with the world as there were many years of suicidal thoughts and wanting to be out of this unsafe confusing world, especially when the people supposed to make it safe, made it unsafe.

Why do I hate the question why?

     This post came up listening to a podcast about personal branding, and growth of a business and one of the most important aspects of building your personal brand and business is "why". Why are you creating this? They described the "why" as such a normal question that didn't usually make people feel an urge to run away from the question "why". The first feeling I had was "well, I'm sure I can figure my business out without it, I know what I want." Sitting with the word "why" was so uncomfortable. Searching for my "why" made my skin crawl and made me want to use old unhealthy coping mechanisms to get rid of the feelings. So the blog post on "why" sat on a scrap of paper for a while until I felt like I was choking with emotion every time I saw the paper and finally had the strength to dive down this uncomfortable place and process while I write.
      I thought back to my time in the religious formal education system especially through middle school and high school, and the lack of ability to ask why. The automatic response was "that is the way it is, don't question the truth" the anger that was the automatic emotional response shared with at some point got engrained, and I tried to train myself to stop asking. This goes even further back to childhood especially with religious rituals the question of why wasn't appreciated as the answers weren't necessarily known or were to be shared, rather shut down as this is what we do. I had been trained for so long to never ask the question "why",I tried very hard to follow the training although, I never did a great job at keeping my mouth shut. The reactions varied depending on what I was questioning. As soon as I write this, of course, the thought that comes to mind, is well don't blame other people for your problems or your actions. And while this is true, actions, reactions, and specific instances do create imprints on me. It's then my job to process the emotions and actions, and this, of course, takes time in order to have the emotional capacity to go back and process. But yes each person's actions and reactions have an impact on someone else and that's normal to accept within boundaries.
      One story that stands in my mind specifically happened when I was in 12th grade. It was the beginning of the year and the class that was being given was called "Bayit Yehudi"-Jewish home. I'm not sure what we were meant to be learning but the first lesson the teacher started out by saying everyone needs to figure out what subject they want to learn to teach, in the teachers' seminary that was run and owned by the same people who owned my high school  (drama for another time). My immediate reaction was to blurt out that I have no interest in being a teacher and there are so many different jobs out there, and not everyone is meant to be a teacher, even the rabbi they claimed was their inspiration for the school specifically wrote about individual talents and using them in many of his writings. The continuation of the outburst included pointing out many of my friends in the class and how they had so many talents and career options more suited to them, at that point the teacher had really had enough, she had already told me to go to the principal's office, now told me I was not welcome back in this class for the rest of the year. Now the first emotion I thought I felt at that moment was elation, "great I get a free period every week for the entire year, chilling on the grass outside for an extra hour a week sounds great." That emotion subsided quickly as I slammed the front door on the school building and went to sit down on the grass outside, surpassing the useless visit with the principal who would have nothing to say that I felt was worth listening to. Sitting down with my back against a tree the next feeling that washed over was one of abandonment and feeling completely alone, none of my friends had backed me up in class, they all stayed silent as I ranted. Now logically this makes sense they were and most still are part of that community and talking back would be committing community suicide. Just thinking back on this memory brings back up so many feelings of anger and being suppressed into the cookie-cutter image of how I was supposed to behave and what the next steps in my life were supposed to be. It also brought up the feeling of how they used the religious icon of a very important rabbi, especially in their circle when they wanted to force us to come to school specifically the day before a big exam to pray even when legally the students are supposed to have the day off to study at home. Yet they refused to acknowledge what that same rabbi actually said about unique individual talents, the hypocrisy made me crazy, even though it was far from the first time this happened, this one hit especially deep. Evidence to that fact as these same emotions are actually bubbling up in me right now as I write this seven years later.
    There were a few people in my life who let me question why and I am forever indebted to those two for giving me the space to start re-learning to use the question of why. The crazy thing is I actually love questioning as to why things are, for a while I wanted to go into research about different things all of course based on things that I questioned, and then internally had already learned how to shut down my voice of why, almost automatically never questioning the reaction and action. So here's to learning to listen to myself say why, and follow the rabbit hole down a healthy path of self exploration.

Giving Grace

I am hard on myself. Regardless of how much I'm going through and how much I still achieve, I'm notorious for getting upset at myself when I'm having a mentally down day, and continuing the spiral downwards. During this time, while having so much of it thanks to the global pandemic, it has given me plenty of chances to practice giving myself the space of grace to be in the dark rather than getting angry at myself for not being in the productive state. Grace is something that really doesn't come easily or naturally to me, be it as a reaction to some of partially how I was raised, I feel sometimes with too much grace, and trying to remove anything that was uncomfortable and made my life harder at the specific moment in time. I remember even when I was very young my reaction to that was to work harder and to push harder to get to that uncomfortable place of pain and growth since it wasn't the norm, rather something I craved. While I do find it hard to give myself the grace space, I find when I do I can actually get back to what I want to get done faster. Sometimes it's coloring for five or ten minutes, sometimes it's going outside and just soaking in some nature. I don't know if anyone is into not giving grace like me, I started noticing that even though I love seeing flowers around where I was going, I literally wouldn't stop to smell the roses.  Until I started having this excessive amount of "free" time when I could and would finally listen to the voice telling me to keep moving and then shoving it out and started giving myself the grace to slow down and actually stop and enjoy the flowers around me. Actually stopping and appreciating the shape, color, and individuality of each flower. I even started letting myself photograph the flowers and try to snapshot that grace I felt for myself in the photo. This grace that I have found in slowing down and enjoying the flowers and photographing the moment, I'm trying to bottle the grace and use it when I get down and hard on myself and give myself the feeling of smelling the flowers and inhale some grace.

Internal Expresssion Restrictions

Sometimes I dont notice how restricting I am of self-love, and giving myself the space to be. Especially in the creative areas of my being. Over my time in the eating disorder clinic, I learned many of my restriction habits and signals and worked on the regulation of those habits with food, but not with creativity and other ways I restrict myself for an illusion of control. This came to a head as these past few days have been some of the hardest in the past month of the pandemic and pretty much complete isolation. I was in such a funk that even after my two planned workouts, a shower and a good meal, I was still just so stuck, mentally with both feeling so much and feeling nothing at all (that specific mental space I will elaborate on another time). I knew this had to do with feeling like I had no way to export and process the mess that was just a pressure cooker inside my mind but didn't really know how to relieve the pressure in a healthy way. Luckily in all my mindless scrolling of Instagram, I happened upon a good friend (basically a sister) post discussing the creative block along with a coloring book mid color. This reminded me I actually had a coloring book and inspired me to take it off the shelf. Of course, I struggled with the classic thought I have "Don't waste the coloring book you dont have so many, and this one is special you bought it your last week in Florida." My thoughts seem to not be my friend most of the time, but I managed to walk myself out of that ditch with "Yea, its special so use it in a special time, and also you can buy more coloring books, they aren't exclusive to America, and also there is Amazon you know." Finally, I opened the book up to where I had last stashed the pencils and realized it was a very unfinished picture from the one night I stayed up as late as they let me in the psychiatric ward coloring. This brought a different wave of emotions-the first one was shame. "Am I in such a bad place like when I was in the psychiatric ward that I need to color?" My immediate response to that thought was "seriously? just because you colored when you were in a bad state in the hospital, it doesn't mean you are in the same place. You can be in different places and still color to relax and calm your mind." So after running a mental marathon with myself over a coloring book and some colored pencils, I opened it up to a new design and started. I put on some background music- classical cello has been my go-to for a while (it makes me miss my days of cello, but also puts me in a calm space, another post another time). I colored for a while and could just feel my mind release-I mean I haven't been able to write anything for weeks and have been actually trying, it's not perfect and my mind sent other thoughts, but I was able to just fall into the soothing rhythmic colors and lines and tried to relax into the experience. Funnily enough, I chose a picture of a bird to color in and the picture I started to color in the hospital was of fish, so probably another post to analyze another time.  For now, I am just going to try and hold space for myself and not overrun my mind with thoughts and when I get overrun, then let them out.

Impromptu Photoshoots

Up until this past year I pretty much hated being in pictures and refused to take pictures of myself. I have always wanted to wait until I liked (forget loved) what I saw in the mirror, I want to be skinnier and have a more defined muscular physique. What I refused to acknowledge was the reason I hated taking and being in photographs was the lack of self-acceptance and self-love rather than how I fit in the frame. Do I want to be healthier and fitter? Absolutely! But I'd also like to have memories along that journey and enjoy the fun things I do during this time still creating memories. Another classic anxious thought that runs rampant in my mind especially during my travels is that everyone-or at least someone is watching me take these photos, and seeing me be out of my comfort zone. I have this somewhat loud irrational fear that everyone around me will see me do something "silly/weird". Instead of just going with the flow with what feels good and fun to me I have this internal voice that tries to shut down any comfort and enjoyment of myself at the moment. In turn with the figuring out more of the weird twisted thoughts in my mind I try to challenge these thoughts, I had a chance to do this on a family trip to France to visit family this past winter we were walking by a Christmas tree and water fountain and my sister asked me to take some photos of her, I did and enjoyed being the photographer but then decided to push myself and get her to take some photos of me. Posing felt awkward of course as the internalized voice saying why are you moving your body, why are you smiling, who are you trying to copy or look like. I tried to shut that voice off and just smile and enjoy the moment with my sister trying to laugh the internal awkward feeling away. So do I love my body and the pictures without noticing the flaws? No, but I try to enjoy the photos and my body for what they are and where I am in life. Do I feel this weird internalized feeling of being super touristy and taking posey photos in Europe? Totally! But I love the memories of pushing myself way out of my comfort zone and having a great experience with my sister, and moving my body a bit and taking shots and freezing memories of a trip in time. Looking back at the photos, I like how far I've come in accepting myself and where I'm at enjoying and loving the moment. Hopefully, my evolution of self-love will continue and I will have photos to remember it by.