To the teenage girl that hates her body,

I know what it's like to be you. I know the pain you feel. I know how hard it is. I know it all too well.

I know what it's like to grip the extra skin around your tummy, your thighs, your hips, your upper arms, and wish you could just cut it off with a pair of scissors. I know what it's like to suck in your stomach to the point of being uncomfortable. I know what it's like to step on the scale and feel nothing but hatred towards the number you see. And yourself.

As so many teenage girls do, I hated my body as I grew up. Hated every inch of it. My stomach had rolls, my boobs were too big, my thighs were too wide, my arms were too untoned, my calves were too bulky, my shoulders were too broad, the list goes on. I remember looking in the mirror as a sixteen year old girl and trying so hard to find something on my body that I liked. I settled for my eyes. That was it. The only part of my body I liked was the color of my eyes.

I felt ugly. Looking in the mirror, such a simple action, became almost impossible for me. I wondered to myself, would I ever get past this and find love in myself? That, too, felt impossible.

But it wasn't.

Now, as a twenty-year-old woman, I find myself beautiful. I love myself. In fact, there's not a single part of me that I don't love. I have grown immensely, and it took only one thing--one thing that completely changed my life: positivity.

Focusing on positivity and teaching my anxiety-ridden self not to be negative all the time is what helped me learn how to love myself and the skin that I am in--the skin I'm lucky to be in. Instead of looking for all the things I hated about myself, I looked for things to love.

Like I said earlier, I love my eyes because they're bright, bright blue. I learned to love my pale Irish skin, which I previously hated. Now, I look at it as it makes me unique. I used to hate my thighs and hips and how wide they were. Now, I appreciate the curvatures of my body and how good I look in a pair of high waisted jeans. I used to hate how large my chest was. Now, my body is so much more proportionate and it brings out a confidence in me that I never knew I had.

Your body is your temple. Your forever home. Your body pumps the blood through your veins, breathes the air into your lungs, holds your precious brain that you use to think and create and feel and contribute to the world in your own way. Your body sustains you and continuously fights for you. How could I hate something that had done so much for me?

I know it's so hard to look past all your flaws, especially in a society like ours where beauty is everything; or their definition of "beauty." But who says you have to follow that? A size 0 is just as beautiful as a size 12. Beauty doesn't have a limit. Once you find the beauty in you and the love in yourself, it will shine out of you for everyone to see. And I cannot describe a more freeing feeling.