what I would tell my 18 year old self

Dear 18 year old me,

First and foremost, learn to love yourself. You are beautiful inside and out. Just stop worrying so much about your weight and be healthy. STOP throwing up everything you consider "bad" after you eat it. You have one body to live in. Cherish it. Appreciate it for all of the things it does for you every day. Stop wishing you were smaller. Stop thinking guys will like you more if you're skinny. It's not true.

Don't bother trying to transfer schools. You love Southern Miss and will make the best friends you could ever imagine. Don't study abroad in Jamaica, though. Go to London or France instead.

Don't rekindle that friendship. She doesn't stick around very long this time anyway, and it only hurts you again in the end.

You are so much better than that awful, abusive relationship with you-know-who, but you will learn so much from your year long struggle. You will learn how to respect yourself, how to stand up for yourself, and what you're worth. You learn that romantic relationships will not bring you validation and that your voice deserves to be heard. I'd say don't even date him, but you need to learn these lessons. You will appreciate your amazing husband so much more after you learn them.

Continue to love every minute of life. It becomes so much more than you ever dreamed it would be. It's not always easy. You're going to go through rough times, but keep Christ first in your life. He will always see you through with the utmost grace.

Keep your free spirit, positive attitude, and drive to succeed. Be proud of who you are and the things you stand for. Always help those in need. Be the first to smile when you pass a stranger, and love with reckless abandon.

With so much love,

Chelsea

| Images by: Judy Kellar of Killer Shots Photography |

november goals

*Save $$$ (aka stop buying clothes I don't need)
*Finish at least half of my Christmas shopping.
*Clean up my diet. (Exercise has been on point...eating...not so much.)
*Blog more consistently. (I'm aiming for every week day!)
*Do more freelance writing.

I'm all about goal setting and list making and planner keeping. Kinda weird for someone who is usually just flying by the seat of her pants. What can I say? I'm a plethora of oxymorons. I have to have everything written down. I'll more than likely forget it if I don't. I'll probably forget it even if I do, though.

Anyone else the same? Just me? Ok. Cool. Untreated ADD! Woo!

Ok. I'm done.

Anyway, I have some really cool content planned for the next few months that I really think y'all will enjoy. But, I'd love to hear from you! What do you want to read? What are your goals for November?

/// Chelsea

+Tag me on Insta, Twitter, or FB #MississippiHippy

+Follow me, too! Instagram (@ChelseaEli), Facebook, Twitter (@ChelseaTThomas), or send me a SnapChat @chelseaeli.

weekly window: halloween hangover

I'm that girl. I'm the one who likes to skip right over the Thanksgiving stuff and go straight to Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love celebrating Thanksgiving. Having an excuse to eat all the food and love on family for a while is literally the best thing ever, but lets get real. Christmas decorations and music are far superior to Thanksgiving decorations.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween, though. Thursday night, I ran the Rankin County Chamber of Commerce Glow Run 5k with these pretty ladies. Except it was more like 3.5 miles than 3.1...

We spent Halloween with the family giving out candy to the little trick or treaters and stuffing our faces. I've felt like death all day. I think I have a Halloween hangover. My body is detoxing all the junk. Yet, I just ate some Reese's Pieces. Crap.

Excuse me while I drink a gallon of water, get back to boot camp, and die tomorrow.

So how do you feel about premature Christmas decorating? For it? Against it? Indifferent? Let me know! I'll just be over here humming Christmas tunes and taking down the Halloween stuff.

/// Chelsea

+Tag me on Insta, Twitter, or FB #MississippiHippy

+Follow me  Instagram (@ChelseaEli), Facebook, Twitter (@ChelseaTThomas), or send me a SnapChat @chelseaeli.

what's in a name?

Growing up smack dab in the middle of Mississippi, being called a "hippy" wasn't always a good thing. It's usually aimed at labeling someone as a "liberal" or "left-wing." I'll leave politics out of it, but I wanted to take a little time to explain to you where the name Mississippi Hippy came from.

The summer after my freshman year of college, Jason Aldean came out with a song called She's Country. The song talks about girls from various states in the south and picks a little adjective that basically rhymes with their state or something from their state. Mississippi's line says, "getcha flipping kinda trippy like a Mississippi hippy." I loved it.

My whole life, people have referred to me as a "hippy." I've always liked it. Granted, it hasn't always been a compliment. Most of the time, though, it was in reference to my free spirit, love for music, and tendency to like flowy clothes and flowers in my hair. Oh, and the fact that I'm obsessed with hippy culture. I left my wedding in a VW Bus for goodness sake.

Anyway...

When I decide to start a blog way back in 2012, it seemed like a perfect name. A lot of people think of Mississippians as back woods rednecks, and that couldn't be farther from the reality of most of its residents and myself. The definition of a hippy is a young person who rejects established social customs and advocates a nonviolent ethic.

Well...that's me!

I reject the established social custom of self hate and being violent towards oneself or others. I believe in choosing love over fear. I believe in loving yourself exactly as you are because you are already perfect. You get my drift here, right?

So there ya have it! That's where the name Mississippi Hippy came from, and the rest is history!...kinda.

///

Tag me on Instagram (@ChelseaEli), Facebook, Twitter (@ChelseaTThomas), or send me a SnapChat @chelseaeli! I want to see your self-love! You can even add #MississippiHippy so I can see!

Image by Sully Clemmer

Feelin' My Selfie

Why do we have such a problem with selfies?

In a world full of women who do not feel like they live up to the standards that society has set for them, why do we hate to see a picture of someone who likes the way they look?

Why does it bother us that someone else is happy with themselves?

I'd so much rather see a Facebook feed full of selfies of women who know their beauty and worth than one full of celebrity gossip and "I had a turkey sandwich for lunch today" statuses. Selfies do not depict a conceited person or a mental disorder. Selfies show confidence, happiness, and courage. They are empowering.

So what if a group of girls spent a large amount of time taking pictures of themselves instead watching a baseball game? We should be applauding the fact that they are comfortable enough with themselves to take a selfie. Saying that selfies are self-serving and conceited is telling someone that it's not okay for them to like themselves. That is the problem here.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather see a world full of people who love themselves enough to post a selfie over a world full of people trying to live up to the impossible standards the media sets. By bashing the "selfie generation," we are, once again, perpetuating the belief that women shouldn't be comfortable with their natural selves.

STOP IT.

I want my children to grow up in a world full of love for themselves and love for others, don't you?

Selfie bashing moves us closer to neither of these things. Think about it.

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Tag me in your selfies on Instagram (@ChelseaEli), Facebook, Twitter (@ChelseaTThomas), or send me a SnapChat @chelseaeli! I want to see your self-love! You can even add #MississippiHippy so I can see.

balancing act

I do not like the circus. I am quite terrified of clowns, and I've never enjoyed watching people needlessly risk their precious lives walking a tight rope 100 feet in the air for the sake of entertainment.

That being said, the life lesson I have been learning lately is BALANCE. Life is a balancing act. Now, it's been a few years since I last took a gymnastics lesson, but I don't remember the balance beam ever being easy. Maybe I'm just clumsy...

Anyway...

Balance is hard, and I'm not talking about just food. Although, that's the hardest thing to balance for me. It's so hard to juggle work, relationships, chores, health, and everything else life brings along. Throw in having food issues and BAM--I'm a panic attack waiting to happen. I completely shut down. I'm sure everyone can relate.

After a long day of work, it is so incredibly difficult to come home and cook a healthy dinner that I won't feel guilty for eating and clean up the mess, work on my blog, do laundry, work out, and spend time with  my husband. STRESS. Like, only Wonder Woman could ever do all of that in a day. I can't even imagine having children to take care of on top of that. Seriously..how do people do it?

I'll tell you my secret--I don't. I think that's the key to balance. I'm learning that I can't do it all, and that's okay. I have to take it bit by bit and day by day. You don't run across the balance beam. You have to take it one step at a time. You build up to the tricks and turns.

So here's what happened yesterday...

Last weekend, I was balanced. I had been eating healthy and clean for weeks. After much distress, I decided I would eat the things I wanted in moderation since we were spending the weekend celebrating Nick's birthday, his mom's birthday, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras. While I didn't want to feel guilty for enjoying myself, I also didn't want to feel deprived all weekend. So I didn't, and everything was fine.

I got back on track on Tuesday when we returned to life as usual, but yesterday, I had to balance, again, due to situations beyond my control. I'm embarrassed to admit that it brought on full blown meltdown mode. Tears, cussing, screaming, jumping on and off the scale 3 times to see if I had gained any weight--RIDICULOUSNESS. If you're recovering from food and body issues like myself, and even if you're not, sometimes it just looks like a never ending battle facing you for the rest of your life. I just kept thinking, "Am I going to feel guilty for the rest of my life every time I eat something deemed 'unhealthy'?" "Am I going to have to live the rest of my life in fear of being obese again?"

After much coaching, supporting, and consoling, my superman of a husband talked me back down to reality. I am not fat. I am not going to gain every bit of weight I have lost back from a few chips and some bread. I am doing well and life happens. It's not a sprint. I changed my life 2 years ago when I started this. A meal not made completely of vegetables will not change that. I am beautiful.

Honestly, I don't know the answers to those questions that pop in my brain when I've eaten something "bad", and that's really scary. I do, however, have hope. I don't feel guilty EVERY SINGLE TIME I eat an Oreo like I once did, but sometimes I do. The frequency of feeling guilty has gone down, but I don't know if those feelings will ever completely go away. That's just something I'm going to have to keep working on.

Post Panic Attack Snap Chat

So, today, I'm okay. Balance is the key, and eating some chips is what balance looks like in my life right now.

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one for the books

What a beautiful weekend of Spring-like weather and quality time with Nick and my parents. Words just can't even explain how much I love those people. They are my rocks.  They keep me grounded. God knows I can go spiraling into my craziness--which happens more than I care to admit.They always bring me back down to Earth.

Sometimes when I'm blogging, I wish I had cute and squishy babies to post about. All of my favorite blogs have cuddly little babies on them all the time. So not ready for that though...Can I borrow a baby just to blog about?  That's creepy. Nevermind.

Anyway, our Saturday went something like this:

I've been sick for a week, so I woke up around 7 ready to go after falling into a cough syrup coma around 7:45 pm the night before. It was a GORGEOUS day. One for the books, really.  I wait patiently until 9:00 am to obnoxiously jump on the bed to wake up the husband. He promptly rolled over in protest. Like a good little housewife, I made Nick some coffee, and he finally stumbled into the kitchen to greet the day.

After much debate on where to spend the day (cause it just could not possibly be spent indoors), we decided to head to the Fondren area in downtown Jackson. We had a yummy lunch at Brent's Drugs (the soda shop in the movie, The Help), and we wondered around town. We got some coffee and stumbled upon this cool new place called Hops and Havannas. Nick is a cigar lover, so we stopped in. Every kind of beer and cigar you could possibly dream of. Nick found his favorite cigar and we sat outside and talked while he enjoyed his cancer stick. ;)

We decided to drive around and look at houses. We've been toying with the idea of buying soon, but we got distracted on the way. You see, the Mississippi Agriculture Museum was right there. If you know my husband at all--you know he's a sucker for a museum. Who was I to deny him the outdoor museum when it was so beautiful out? So we went, and we had THE BEST TIME EVER. I've been to this museum about a thousand times. It was THE hottest field trip location when I was a youngin'. However, Nick had never been. We wondered around the exhibits, drank sodas out of glass bottles from a General Store, played bottle cap checkers, and frolicked in some cotton bales.

Hat: Free People // Jacket: Mossimo (old)  // Shirt: Merona Men's (old) // Shirt: Chaser (old) // Leggins: Lululemon // Shoes: Converse // Sunnies:  RayBan

What a truly great day with my love. It's a joy to be his wife. I swear I tried to take more pictures of him, but he's just not a fan of a camera in his face. Bummer.

/////

Empowering Women

Mississippi Hippy is changing.

Over the past year, I have come to realize my passion for empowering women and helping girls of all ages find health, happiness, and balance in their life's journey.

I know what it means to fight.  I've fought bullies. I've fought weight.  I've fought eating disorders.  I've fought body dysmorphia.  I've fought negative self image.  I've fought depression.  You name it, I've fought it.  ALL women have, and I'm tired of it.  I'm tired of fat shaming.  I'm tired of skinny shaming.  I'm tired of slut shaming.  I'm tired of shaming!  The media has pushed us too far.

Yes, we were created in God's holy image to be warriors, but how can we be warriors when the battles we're fighting keep us from our intended purpose.  We were made to be loving, confident, and courageous, but we are being force fed media images that tell us we're fat, ugly, weak, and not enough.

Well I have a message for you...YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH.

From here on out, Mississippi Hippy will be devoted to promoting real, normal, happy, healthy women.  I want to focus on teaching women to have balance in their life.  We cannot be the best person, mother, wife, or child that we can be when we're run down from the messages that tell us we don't measure up.

Don't buy into the bull, ladies!

Here's some post topics you will now be seeing:

• Health
• Body Image and Recovery
• Lifestyle (what real women's lives look like every day, not the crap you see on Real Housewives)
• Fitness
• Food (cause you can love kale and chocolate chip cookies, ok?...not together, of course..unless you're into that sort of thing.)
• Entertainment
• Travel
• and more!

If you have anything you'd like to see on the NEW and IMPROVED Mississippi Hippy, please comment and let me know! It is truly time for us, as women, to band together to build each other up.  We are not competing against one another.  We shold empowering each other to lead the lives we were born to live and deserve to live.  The images being shoved down your throat every day are FAKE, FAKE, FAKE. It is time to make a change.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

And here's all real and all natural me. (excuse my MacBook Photo Booth glow)

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