www.truecampaign.org

The Unbranded Beauty Project is linked on the news and highlights section of the True Campaign website, http://www.truecampaign.org/.

What is the True Campaign?

"The True Campaign exists to end the crisis of distorted self image by challenging cultural ideals about identity and beauty, so we can be free to impact our world as God intended.
Let’s face it: too many of us dislike our bodies and struggle with eating issues. It’s time to start talking. It’s time to change and take action. For the sake of our future, its time to be True."
-www.truecampaign.org

This is something that is so close to my heart as I have struggled with body image for years.

I remember when I went on my first diet. For an entire year, I ate jelly and banana sandwiches for lunch (which is totally gross and soggy), because (I thought) jelly and banana's were fat free. In fact, I subtly refused to eat anything with fat in it, and scoured the label of any food that wanted passage into my mouth. Every night before bed, I performed a series of exercises I found in a workout book my mother had laying around the house. I strictly adhered to this regiment. It was consuming. And I was only eleven.

I'd love to say it ended there. That the obsession was a passing phase. Sadly, it was just the beginning of years of disordered eating, low self esteem, and poor body image. I spent my teenage years experimenting with crash diets, starvation, and even self-purging.

I was never fat. I just wasn't a size two. And that was not acceptable.

In the past year, I finally learned to truly accept my body, and myself, as is. I eat nutritional foods, exercise regularly, and am not a size two. But I am healthy. I realized I'd have to be unhealthy, physically and mentally, if I wanted my body to be different (aka a size two).

It took 14 years for me accept this. I finally believe I am beautiful, just the way I am. I don't have to meet any standard. The person God created me to be, is acceptable. It's a shocking and freeing realization.

I really wanted to help other women, particularly teenage girls, understand this, which is what inspired the Unbranded Beauty Project. It's needed. I know I have not been alone in my struggles.

The True Campaign is helping women who share these struggles. It's a great resource for any woman. Definitely check it out.

I'm so excited to be a part of it in anyway. I hope the Lord can use my own story, and the stories of the women I interviewed, to break through the distortion of our culture.

It's very lonely when you don't feel like your precious. For me, that was the center of it all. Who I was was never enough to earn that title.

But everyone is precious to God. As is. We are all unique and different reflections of His beauty.

I just everyone knew it.