Woman Encourages Other Women To Celebrate Their Natural Bodies And Gives A Perfect Example https://ift.tt/2vLgo0T

Looking at pictures of celebrities and influencers with perfectly sculpted abs and flawless makeup on social media, we tend to forget about the natural beauty of the human body. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be fit. Having stretch marks is okay. Having acne is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a part of who we are – it’s part of being human.

A woman named Irais Cadena from Chihuahua, Mexico recently wrote a heartfelt post on Facebook, encouraging women to embrace their natural bodies. She used Sarah Nicole Landry, a writer and mother of three who documented her own journey to loving her body, as the perfect example and the post quickly went viral, being shared over 662k times.

See Irais’ honest and heartfelt post in the gallery below!

Irais Cadena recently wrote a heartfelt post encouraging women to embrace their natural bodies

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She used Sarah Nicole Landry, a writer and mother of three, as the perfect example

Image credits: thebirdspapaya

Landry, a 35-year-old from Ontario, Canada, isn’t afraid of publicly talking about her own journey to accepting her body and learning self-love. In an interview with Bored Panda, the woman said she has been struggling with body issues for a long period of life. “I did my first diet at age 14, and it would continue off and on through ’til adulthood,” said Sarah.

“I really had believed that losing weight would be the way for me to find body acceptance so I sought that strongly about 5-6 years ago. After losing around 100lbs, I was devastated to discover that I still had body image issues, perhaps even worse than before,” continued the writer. “Since then, I’ve worked through my issues around self-worth, disordered eating, and my confidence and have journeyed through that process online.”

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Sarah isn’t afraid to publicly speak about her journey to self-love

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Eventually, Sarah’s diets led her to disordered eating, fatphobic thoughts, and even food fear, something she had to work on reversing for years.

It was when the woman was going through a divorce that the turning point happened. “I lost some extra weight due to stress and was probably the least healthy I’d ever been, but people continued to congratulate me on my thinness without knowing what was really going on,” explained the writer. “I realized that I had to face the fact that weight loss didn’t make me happy, and I needed to find a balance for me and my body, for a lifestyle I could love and a body I could celebrate even as it changed.”

Sarah’s followers love her honesty

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As a parent of three, the woman occasionally gives her thoughts on parenting

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“Once I started following such a diverse group of women and men online, it really opened up my eyes to how different beauty is and how it’s really about who you are and not what you look like!” said Sarah. The woman eventually learned to embrace her natural body and stopped worrying about her weight, calling the whole experience “freeing”.