Accept yourself as you are

I seem to have struck a cord with many with my recent talk about how much I hate pictures of myself and how I'm trying to get over it. For many years now I have joked that I am alergic to cameras. I avoid them, at least the front of them, as much as I can. You would not believe how many paper pictures I have ripped up and how many digital pictures I have deleted over the years. Because of that, there are very few pictures of me, especially since I've been married and had kids.

Finding the scrapbooking hobby a few years ago made me realize how sad that is. According to pictures, I have pretty well been absent from our family's life for years. I can't go back and change the past, but I can change the future, and I've been trying to work on that, but I really haven't been that successful. I haven't been able to let go of the fact that I don't like pictures of myself. But I need to get over that. The importance of it was really driven home to me recently by this blog post, which was drawn to my attention the day after the writer of the post died, just a few days more than a month after she wrote the first post.

Earlier this month DD was getting ready to go out and looking like her beautiful self and I wanted to take a picture of her. She agreed on one condition, I had to get in the picture with her. Reluctantly I agreed. I hate me in the pictures. I almost deleted them right afterwards, but I kept them for her. I've never posted them anywhere but I am going to post them here as encouragement for you. Here are the pictures DD took that day:




Here are a couple of pictures I took of myself and Little One the day after I read the post I linked above:




And here's one I took of me. The great thing about a digital camera is that you can take lots and delete lots until you finally come up with one that is passable, if not totally acceptable. This was the best of the many that I took so you can imagine how bad the others were. ;)




I challenge you to do as the lady I linked to above said, "hand over the camera and get in those photos!", or have some fun taking some self photos of you with your kids, or even you alone. Don't let another day pass with your kids not having a picture of you, especially one of you with them. You may not like what you look like in the pictures, but it is the you that your kids love. Be brave - get in those pictures, and keep them, and post them even. Accept yourself as you are.