FBW: Andy from Crazy with a Side of Awesomesauce (Ms. July)

FBW stands for Featured Blogger of the Week. Each week we will feature one of our calendar ladies or gentleman. Mondays will be a post written by the FBW and Wednesdays will be an interview of the FBW. If you want to know how you can be a part of the Blogger Body Calendar project, please click here.

I can’t explain why I wanted to be apart of the Blogger Body Calendar without explaining my deepest secrets and pains. If you’ve read my blog, you know many of them.

I am the adopted daughter of a crazy woman who beat me down with whatever she could from shoes to words. I am a sexual assault survivor who didn’t tell anyone about the assault until too many years later. I’ve attracted people in my life whose narcissistic personalities abused my soul for entirely too many years.

But despite or because of those experiences, I believe with my whole body that survival is about self-love, nurturing your own strengths and then nurturing the strengths in others.

More than one person has commented that it’s amazing I seem so normal, with all I’ve been through. First of all, I always reply, what is normal anyway? Secondly, I’ve worked hard to heal, to be whole, to love myself. It’s been incredibly hard, but completely worth it

By my late twenties, I was ready to take myself back, to reclaim my being for myself. Not only was therapy the single-most invaluable thing I ever did, but it allowed me a forum to help myself and do the hard work with honest feedback and a cheerleader whose job it was to be on my side.

Seriously, I highly recommend it.

In that process, I figured out what I could let go of, both emotionally and literally. I let go of the guilt of being not good enough and learned what about myself made me feel better than and great at, what I loved for the pure joy of it. What had been my survival tools all those years and what I could adopt to do more than survive, to really live.

Words. Words have been my biggest savior: poetry and prose, the reading of words, the writing of words, the community of expression through words. What I couldn’t say, I could write. And the words of countless strong characters in books have bolstered me for the whole of my life, old friends I can always turn to.

Learning. Expanding my mind. The more educated we are, the more worth we give ourselves, the more we expect out of life. Education has been proven to combat abuse and domestic violence. And I am an education addict. The more I stretch my brain, the more confident I feel.

Movement. Though performance is something I dread and something my mother forced upon me, dance made the list as a constant love. When I dance, I’m wholly me. I’m in my body and my mind is given over to the movement. I feel strong and beautiful in both a primal and controlled way. My body is strong and powerful and real and I can inhabit it without any question.

People. I finally had the freedom to let go of the toxic people from my life sans any guilt. But on the flip side, I could never survive without those who love me most and who’ve always held me up no matter what or when. My father, my cousin, my dearest and best friends. People who give their love unwaveringly and who I’d do anything for (And I mean anything. Anyone have a body to bury? I’m there.). People who’ve taught me what kind of love I want to attract in my life.

Myself. I have myself to love and trust and rely on. Figuring out who I am and what I love about me has been the most powerful tool I’ve ever discovered, and one I use a million times a day. And once I figured that out, I realized that the more I push myself, to live, to learn, to grow, to be, I get better and better and I don’t accept anything or anyone that brings me down. I can accept who I am as I am, but also know that I can only get better in all the ways that matter. I mature, I grow, I pursue wisdom. I love who I am today and can’t wait to meet who I’ll be in ten, twenty, thirty years.

So THAT is why I want to be apart of this incredible project. To show that I love myself, all of myself. To show that loving oneself is the best survival tool anyone can possess.

Andrea (Andy to her friends) blogs at Crazy with a Side of Awesomesauce, and Sprocket Ink. She can also be found sharing a little bit of her crazy on Twitter @andygirl and on Facebook.