Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself: 40 Ways to Transform Your Inner Critic and Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

a kind, benevolent being (which could be a trusted friend or person you know, or your preferred idea of the universe/higher power/spirit) is with you, saying, “I love that you love.” Then allow yourself to list all the things you love! Write down what you come up with.
    “I love that you love making art. I love that you love dancing. I love that you love to have fun.”
    This always leaves me feeling reaffirmed and self-secure. It never fails to make me feel happy to be me. And it allows me to feel loved for who I truly am, not for what I do for others.
    If you have repressed anger, frustration, or resentment (which is likely when we repress part of ourselves), find ways to healthily express it—for example, through a martial arts class.
    Send love and validation to the aspects of yourself that perhaps your peers, family, and colleagues didn't or don't “get.” You have to expand to be all of yourself.
FINDING BEAUTY IN YOUR SCARS
    by Alexandra Heather Foss
    Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful .
    —T HICH N HAT H ANH
    Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly, marred by trauma, and accompanied by pain and anger.
    We think of beauty and often visualize glossy magazine pages and wafer-thin models. We see beauty as superficial—eye color, hair texture, and numbers on a scale. We see beauty as something to be measured and weighed.
    I don't see beauty that way. I see beauty as the grace point between what hurts and what heals, between the shadow of tragedy and the light of joy. I find beauty in my scars.
    We all have scars, inside and out. We have freckles from sun exposure, emotional trigger points, broken bones, and broken hearts. However our scars manifest, we need not feel ashamed, but beautiful. It is beautiful to have lived, really lived, and to have the marks to prove it. It's a testament of our inner strength. To wear a snazzy outfit takes nothing; but to wear our scars like diamonds? Now that's beautiful.
    Fifteen years ago, I would have laughed at this assertion. “Are you crazy?” I'd say, while applying lipstick before bed. I was that insecure. Lips stained, hair fried by a straightening iron, pores clogged by residue foundation, all in an attempt to be different from how I naturally was, to be beautiful for someone else. I hid my face because it hurt to look at myself in the mirror. I was afraid my unbeautiful truth would show somehow through my skin—that people would know I had been abused, and that in an effort to cope I was starving myself, harming myself. I was afraid people would see that I was clinging to life by a shredding thread.
    Now? I see scars and I see stories. I see a being who has lived, who has depth, who is a survivor. Living is beautiful. Being a part of this world is beautiful, smile-worthy, despite the tears. Beauty isn't a hidden folder full of Kate Moss images for a kid who's dying to forget and fit in. And it isn't a fat-injected smile, or six-pack abs. It's the smile we are born with, the smile that sources from the divine inside, the smile that can endure, even if we've been through a lot.
    My healing started with a birthday gift. It was a photograph my friend had taken of a forest, the word “forgive” painted in pink on a stone. I didn't understand why that word meant something until I really started to think about what forgiveness could mean. I'd blamed myself for so long for things that weren't my fault. Life stopped being beautiful to me, I stopped feeling beautiful inside, and my smile stopped shining beauty out into the world.
    I think in order for us to make life beautiful we need to feel our smiles as we feel our frowns. For so long, I only honored my pain and my sorrow. I lost my smile, less because of the trauma and more because I spent so much time lamenting my scars. When I decided they were beautiful, I became beautiful. When I took