Episode 002: My Body Is Worthy

This episode covers a really heavy topic for me that required lots of pausing during recording, a lot of vulnerability, and a lot of tears. Part of why I started this podcast was to create a space of love and inclusivity, to remind every person out there that your body is worthy, but more importantly, you are worthy.

In this episode, I’m sharing a little bit about my own experience with body image, the impact that the people you love have on how you see yourself, and what I’ve overcome in my own life to get to a place of truly loving and accepting who I am. I hope you enjoy this look inside my world and know that this is Someplace for Every Body.

<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/618022038d4f0300195c3ae8/618ecf0ab1bd7100138ae9be" frameBorder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>

Review the Show Notes:

Feeling Shame from Family (1:48)

Support by My Family (5:56)

Growing Up in Lake Tahoe (6:16)

Let’s Connect:

instagram.com/someplaceimages

instagram.com/carlysomeplace

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies and living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by someplace images, boudoir for everybody, you can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives. Hey, y’all, this is Carly someplace, and you’re listening to someplace for everybody. So today, I w ant to talk about a very heavy subject for me. And I’m sure it’s a heavy subject. For a lot of us, I don’t think that I’m alone in this in any way, shape, or form. And I’m going to talk about this in the best way that I can, which is freely and with all of the emotions that I have with it, I said that I was going to let y’all get to know me piece by piece just like friends do. And that I want my stories to be something that resonates with you and that we learn from one another. And it’s not just another, you know, small one sentence bit. So today, we’re gonna dive deep into my family. And the body shaming that exists there. I’m going to make this statement. That grams. If you ever listen to this, please stop right here. You’re not going to enjoy what I have to say next. And I love you.

But the things that you’ve said about my body are things that have stayed with me and changed me of who I am, and shaped me into who I am. And I’m going to talk about them. And I had a lot of reservation reservations about even having this podcast, or even talking about the things that I’m going to talk about today. You know, discussing conversations with my grandmother, discussing conversations with other family members. And I truly believe that it’s so important to have these conversations. I talked with my mother about this of what would happen if she heard these things. And if you are still listening, if you ever do listen, these things have shaped me into who I am. I don’t enjoy that they are the process of how I had to get there. But they are part of me very much. So my grandmother was a cheerleader in the 1950s. The majority of her worldview is based around 1950s standards of you are a cheerleader. you date someone on the football team, yes, my grandfather was on the football team. You get married young, you have kids, you work effortlessly to be the person to provide a meal for your husband and this this 50s mentality that we’re all pretty familiar with.

And when I came into this world, I was not what she expected. I’m the oldest of the grandchildren, I am the only granddaughter and I am the one that she placed her expectations of the future on my aunt struggled with an eating disorder in her 20s Because my grandmother has this mentality that being thin means being happy. While I understand so much of it is being a product of her generation and the way that she was raised. That doesn’t make it an excuse. And I’m here to tell you that your family, be they blood are the ones that you choose, should be supportive, and loving and encouraging. And they should love you for exactly who you are, and not what your body looks like. Also gonna throw in there not who you love. I’m bisexual, I came out to my family when I was 19 which is a whole other story we will get into some other times thrown that in there too. So I have my whole life, my whole life been told by my grandmother, that if I just lost 10 pounds, I would be so much prettier. And when you are 12 and that is what you’re being told that your worth is based on being pretty and that your worth is being based around your weight.

A 12 year old I was a 12 year old. That’s not healthy. It’s not healthy. And I think honestly that my grandmother forgets that genetics are a thing sometimes. My grandfather is six foot four. And for the majority of my life has weighed well over 200 pounds as a six foot four man should and he’s a big guy. And I truly don’t think She thinks these things through, I don’t think that she thinks about genetics and that genetics happen and that those are passed on to future generations. So there’s that the amount of body shaming that I’ve received from my grandmother for my entire life is excessive. And it’s not just her. I’ve received it from so many other family members, so many other family members who are asking me, oh, you know, well, when are you going to get back on track with losing weight because I’m just, I’m a little concerned about Carly. Or even when I was younger, my aunt telling me well, you just need to wear thong underwear because it’s unbecoming to see how large your underwear are through your jeans. That’s when I was 14. These standards that these other women in my family are making for me are unacceptable. I want to talk about a little bit about my nuclear family, my parents and my brother, my sister. My parents are the most supportive humans on the face of the planet.

The most supportive and I have never been body shamed by my parents. It is such an amazing thing for me to be able to say that they have never done anything except for support me in every way possible. When I was growing up, I grew up in Lake Tahoe, California, which is the jewel of the Sierras. And it’s the perfect outdoor Wonderland year round. Our entire community is based around enjoying everything that the outdoors have to offer, and being very active being an outdoorsy community. From the time that I was in middle school, you pretty much play three sports a year, one per season, and we live a beach life. We’re in a mountain beach town, and it’s amazing thing. So I have been in a bathing suit. And in a bikini my whole life. I have never seen anything wrong with wearing a bikini in my body. But it’s also a small town. There’s a lot of body shaming, there’s a lot of bullying. Let me describe my body to you. I’ve got a booty. I always have and I always will. And I got it from my mama and she is fabulous. I really think that the beauty and the genetics that I get from my mother. The traits that I see in both of us are big booties are loud mouths are everything. Our personalities are so similar. And my mom has always been this just beacon of happy for me in so many ways. Don’t get me wrong, we fight all the time. She’s my best friend. And we hate each other half the time, but she’s everything to me. So my mom’s curvy as well.

We have extremely similar body types. And, and this sounds so weird when I say it out loud. I’ve said it in other podcasts interviews that I’ve given, they’re not ever on my own. My dad is extremely conventionally attractive, even into his late 50s where he is now he is he turns heads. He’s a he’s a he’s adorable. I mean, that’s what I think. But he’s my dad so. So when I’ve grown up my whole life, watching this conventionally attractive man, be excessively overly in love with my mom who’s curvy and fabulous and amazing, and he loves her and he loves her body, and they are best friends. And they are everything. And it has never occurred to me that I couldn’t have something like that. So to hear my grandmother say to me, you’d be so much prettier, and that my attractiveness is based on my weight. And yet I have a shining example in front of me every single day that what the media is feeding us that you have to be thin and attractive and these things to have a perfect partner or to have an attractive partner or to have any of those things. It’s so fucking wrong. It’s so wrong.

And I’m so lucky to have my parents as this shining example of love in so many ways, and unbiased love, and that your body doesn’t mean anything in love your body. It does, but it doesn’t mean that you are not worthy of love, ever. If somebody tells you that they are so wrong, they are so so so so so wrong and I cannot emphasize it enough they are so fucking wrong. The amount that you weigh does not make you lovable or less lovable in any way shape or form. So could continue talking about my parents growing up in this very, very outdoorsy town very, you know, activity oriented and sports and everything. It is a small town and I absolutely was bullied for my body and bullied for you know these things that really were out of my control because again, genetics and When I look back at how active I was, and how much I hated my body in, we’re just going to generalize and say high school, middle school in high school, and how small I was, and how young I was, and how these concepts of body shame are just built into everything that we did. My parents never fit into that. I can only remember two instances where I was told that I was not allowed to wear something.

And that’s because it was entirely an age appropriate in which my father looked at me and said, Nope. But never once have my parents fed into the stigma that I needed to cover my body because it was bigger than other people’s, I have worn a bikini my entire life, I did not buy a one piece bathing suit, until I was in my mid 20s. Even with my belly, even with my big size, even with my big butt, I never wore a one piece bathing suit until I was in my mid 20s. And even now, I only wear one pieces because I like them, not because I want to cover myself. And my parents have always, always supported this, they’ve always supported me wearing whatever I want short shorts, go for it. crop tops, sure, once I was above the age of 18, that eat things like this, and and you don’t realize how incredibly, incredibly important that support until I went out in the world and realized not everybody’s parents were the same. And I know I’m fortunate. And I know, I’m so lucky. And when people ask me, where this confidence comes from, and where this, these trials with my body and overcoming have come from, because we all have them, we all have them, we all have these insecurities around our body, we all have to work through those to grow. And to become more comfortable with ourselves, it takes a lot of being uncomfortable to become comfortable. And so much of this comes back to my grandmother, and her obsession with eating things sugar free, and eating smaller portions and, and just being on a diet. My grandmother is in her 80s Now, and she is still constantly dieting and giving in to this industry and this, everything that she was created into and that she was given when she was a teenager, that these are the things that you need to do.

Or these are the ways that you need to look in order for you to be worthy of love and acceptance. And there’s so much of me that wishes she could honestly sit down and have a conversation. And I could tell her it’s not true. I wish I could tell her it’s not true. She wouldn’t listen, she honestly wouldn’t listen. But it’s one of my deepest desires, that she could just see herself as worthy of being loved. Instead of having to pick herself apart and be slimmer or be smaller, or be the person that she was, I kid you not 70 years ago, as a teenager, 70 years ago, these mentalities have been in her brain for 70 years. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that for me. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for anybody. I don’t want these ideas that were fed to us when we were young adults, to be the only options that we have going forward and how we build our lives on those. So ridiculous standards.

I don’t want that. I don’t want that for anybody. When I was 12 was the first time that I told her that I’d had enough of that. And my parents supported me. And I’m so lucky to say those words right there. I remember walking in it was a holiday of some variety holding a Coca Cola. And my grandmother looked at me 12 years old, and said, Do you know how many calories are in that? And I looked at her and I said I don’t fucking care. Things I did get in trouble for using the F word. Not for telling her that but for using the F word at the age of 12. My grandfather was furious with me because I made my grandmother cry. And my parents were furious at my grandparents, for not taking into consideration that those are things we didn’t talk about in our household. Things weren’t based on calories. Things were based on. Is this nutritional? Yes. Does it make you feel good? Yes. Are you hungry? Eat more? Are you full stop. These are conversations that we had with an our family and my grandmother wasn’t part of that. And she didn’t understand that and that confrontation, altercation anything shaped so much of my teenage years. And moving into the rest of my relationship with my grandmother as an adult.

My grandparents would take a school shopping every year, they would give us a budget. And because I’m the only girl, I got to go shopping just with my grandmother. So mind you, this is a woman who is shaming my body many times, many, many times over and over again. And she’s the person who is buying my clothes, and telling me what I look good, or what I don’t look good. And she prefaces, I don’t know, if you have a family member who does this, she practices everything with? Well, it’s just my opinion, the toxicity of that statement is something that I’ve really only realized in my 30s. And it’s unacceptable. But this is the woman who was buying my clothes. This is the woman who was telling me how I could dress and how I should dress. And my new my parents would, my mom would also take me shopping, and we would get a few things. But the majority of my school clothes came from my grandparents. And she wanted me to be so much like her. In her late teens, she was a model. And that mentality fed into everything else that she did. And she wanted me she wanted me to model she wanted me to do these things. But she wanted me to lose weight to do it. At some point in these shopping trips, and things like this, and this is something that I’ve heard more from my mother, because I don’t want to say I don’t remember it. But I think I’ve blocked it out. I came home from a shopping trip and refuse to eat. And my mother was like, This is not acceptable. You don’t get to decide that you’re not eating. Because grams thinks you should lose weight, you don’t get to decide that your body doesn’t need nutrients, because somebody else’s body needs less nutrients, or somebody else’s body reacts to nutrients differently. And again, so thankful for my parents, so thankful for my parents, so thankful for my mother for seeing that for recognizing these mentalities that were being fed to me at this young young age, and not having a fear of talking about it with me, and not having a fear of have anything of enraging my grandmother, which she does all the time.

I’m so grateful that I have a shining example of what I should be like and who I should act like, and that’s my mother, and that I can be myself and exist and be worthy of love, I still work on myself, mentally, emotionally, still go for walks, still go do the things that I enjoy, still stretch my body and love my body and gives my body so many things. But none of that has to do with how worthy I am of being loved. And I am sure sure that I will tell more stories about my family. And then I will tell more stories about these teaching moments that I’ve experienced in life. Specifically with my grandmother, specifically with my mother, specifically with my Aunt, aunt in general. And I am here to say, I know that I’ll continue to have these discussions and and dive deeper into these topics and conversations that have made me who I am. But I need you to know these things. I needed you to know that if you have family members that are shaming you, you’re not alone. And that if they are shaming you, it has everything to do with them. It has nothing to do with you. You can exist as you are, you are worthy of love exactly the way that you are, your family should be supporting you. And it is okay to cut toxic relationships out. It is okay. I’m sure that this is a very triggering topic for some people, specifically around weight and bodies. And specifically speaking about shame. And speaking about cutting people out and doing things like this. The reasons that I believe so heavily in community is because it takes a village in so many ways. It takes a village and it takes others experiences and sympathy and empathy. And if your family is not giving that to you or you have family members who are continuing to shame you, they’re not worth it. It’s something that is within them. And it does not have to be within you to you are worthy. And I promise you that there is some place for every single body on the face of this planet. And that community can lift you up and community can be your family and community He can support you and tell you that you’re beautiful and that you’re worthy of being loved. In every single state that you are, the meatsuit that carries you through this universe is only one small portion of who you are as a human being.

Your soul, your smile, your laughter, your thoughts, your brain, they have nothing to do with what you weigh the things that make you you have everything to do with your personality, and nothing to do with your weight, nothing to do with your body, I won’t lie to you that I’ve paused while recording this multiple times, to cry, to feel these words that I’m saying out loud, because I truly believe them. Because there is some place for everybody, there is some place for you. You are worthy of love, who are worthy of being the main character in your own story, you are worthy of so many things, you are so worthy. And I thank you for being here. And for listening. This hasn’t been an easy subject for me. But I think it’s a very important one for you to understand part of who I am. And part of the mentality that I have going forward. I can say, I still love my grandmother, so very much. I choose to not be around her. And I choose to not have discussions about bodies with her. I choose to not be around her on holidays where eating is the main subject, which is quite a few. I choose to stand up for myself. I choose to stand up for my mother. When my grandmother is saying the same things to her. I choose to stand up for my brother and my cousin. I choose to stand up for so many points and people that she belittles because she has these shaped views that were fed to her. And that that is what she’s based her world around. And I want to bring different views to you and I want to bring different, different everything to you. I want you to hear from people. I want you to hear from a community that’s struggling with the same things you are the same things that I am. We’re all here together. We’re all on journeys for our body and I truly, truly, truly believe like I’ve said that there is some place for everybody.

Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show. If you’re looking for a community to love on you and support you in your self love Journey, come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at someplace for everybody.com Until we meet again, be kind to yourself