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 |

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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a painfully honest post

When I wrote my blog post telling you guys that Mississippi Hippy was changing directions last week, I meant it. So I need to be totally honest with y'all, and this is NOT easy for me AT ALL. Today has been a rough day.  I've been thinking about throwing up my dinner for the past hour.  It just dawned on me that I should blog about it.  I promised transparency and honesty, so here it is.

I had a LONG day at work. After working late to tutor one of my 5th graders, I had to run some errands.  With Valentine's Day, Nick's birthday, and my mother-in-law's birthday all falling this weekend, I had some shopping to do. While running errands, I found out some tragic news that a college friend had lost her fiancé. I needed to hug my husband, and I needed to hug him right then.

On the way home, I decided to stop by the grocery store to get the groceries to make Nick's favorite cake for him for his birthday since we won't be home this weekend to do it. I wanted to start celebrating him. I hung up his Avenger's Happy Birthday banner and had dinner and beer waiting when he got home. I was so happy to see that man walk through the door.  We ate the healthy dinner I made, and Nick played some Donkey Kong on the WiiU (his birthday present). 

Then came the cake.  The sugar-free (mostly), coconut cake.

When it came out of the oven, I cut a piece off for me before I put on the sweetened condensed milk, sugar-free vanilla icing, shaved coconut, and Coco Lopez on top.  I finished Nick's part of the cake and cut him a piece.  I then sat down with him and ate my icing-less piece of sugar-free cake.

Now, I feel GUILTY.  Terrible guilt.  Guilt enough to consider sticking my finger down my throat--something I haven't done since 2008.  It is still a battle.  Every. Single. Day.

You see, I've been trying to drop a few pounds lately.  Not because I'm fat, but because after I have gained 20 pounds since my wedding last March.  For my health, I needed to drop the weight and get back to the healthiest me.  I'm down 11 pounds.

It is absolutely ridiculous for me to be having the guilty thoughts for eating a sugar-free, icing-less piece of cake.  Deep down inside, I know that BALANCE is the key to a healthy and happy life, and I know that I will get through these feelings I'm having right now.  I will not throw up my dry piece of cake, and I REFUSE to waste the rest of my night feeling bad and being mad at myself.

I am stronger than the guilt. I am stronger than the anger, and I am most definitely stronger than Bulimia.

This, too, shall pass.  I'm human. Tomorrow is a new day. A dry piece of cake will not define me.

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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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