Jen Bardall is really bad at writing her own bio. You can find her sharing recipes and slices of life over at The Misadventures of Mrs. B, and at HonorYourselfNow.net, where she encourages women to live their best life – one loving choice at a time. You can tweet her at @JenniferBardall.
It finally happened. I finally found something I can be passionate about, something to devote my heart to and throw my energy and determination into.
See, I spent the ages of 5 through 25 with absolutely zero self-esteem, culminating in a nasty compulsive eating problem, not to mention the idea that I wasn’t worth much of anything. My dreams were for naught, I’d never find anyone to love me, the whole nine yards.
Then I changed my mind. I wrote another life story. I turned it around. And now I want to help other women turn their own inner stories around so they, too, can live their lives.
I feel amazing. I create a newsletter and a new Facebook page and have my husband build a website. I write and design my own e-book from scratch with no previous knowledge of InDesign. I even create and test a month-long beta program which I want to eventually launch to the public.
I have a mission and I’m on a roll. Look out, world…
…and then it starts. That whisper in my ear.
You’ll never be successful. You know that, right?
Screeeech! Forward progress stalled.
Just because I found a way to mute or drown out the hurtful, scathing inner voices I know so well doesn’t mean I conquered them entirely.
What makes you so special?
Well…what does make me so special, anyway? I mean, so many other people do this sort of work. And they’re amazing. What will set me apart?
Will people know that I feel like a fraud? That there are still times when I want nothing more than to escape into a package of cookies and not come up for air until they’re all gone?
“No! Stop!” I say. Don’t even go down that road. You have a lot to offer. Your story. Your struggle. Your triumph. It’s worth sharing, even if it helps just one woman.
Right. Who do you think you’re fooling?
I put on my Virtual Earmuffs and “lalala I can’t hear you” my way through it. I put my head down and do the work.
I could tell myself that I’ll wait until I completely conquer my inner critic…but I know that will never happen. I know there will always be part of me that’s the obese girl, no matter how much I weigh. I’ll always be the girl who didn’t see herself as a real woman, who cried herself to sleep, who consoled her aching heart with food and more food until she weighed over 280 pounds and thus hated herself more than ever.
But I’m not that girl anymore. She’s in the past – part of me, but not all of me now. I’m not afraid to run my own life anymore. I’m pursuing my dreams. And I am determined to make it possible for other women to do the same.
It’s just a matter of getting that inner critic to shut up already. And making sure the cookies are out of my reach for now.
