The Self-Esteem of a Confidence Queen
Over the next month, every single room in my house needs to be emptied, painted and/or carpeted, and then reloaded. Between replacing all of the original carpets and painting every common room, there are only about 500 square feet of the house that aren’t going to be touched. Very exciting. Very time consuming. Also, what a great opportunity for me to make this 100x harder than it needs to be. I figured, if I’m touching everything in the house anyway, why not do my largest Goodwill purge in home ownership history? I’m feeling motivated and ruthless and I’ve already filled the trunk space of the Expedition after just the master closets. We [apparently] have too much shit.
Gutting my closet was the most fun. Watching a woman decide what clothes to offload could be such an interesting study in body image psychology. Like every pre-menopausal mom in her 30’s, I have many different sizes (and purposes) of clothing on my racks:
– Back-when-I-used-to-be-employed-and-professional clothes
– Weeks 3-16 maternity clothes that hide the teeny bump but are otherwise hideous af
– Big-belly stage maternity clothes
– Nursing-friendly clothes
– Postpartum-but-not-nursing clothes
– Old bridesmaids dresses
– College GOTs that will never fit again
– The eight outfits I wear on repeat
– Sweatpants and leggings (a concerning level of overlap with the aforementioned category)
– Precisely 97 items that are out of style but fit so I can’t logically throw away
I tried on everything. If I wouldn’t walk out of the house in it in the next 10 minutes, it got moved out. (I now have a LOT of open space… I welcome any and all offers from stylish friends who want to join me shopping and teach me how to dress). I spent about two hours savagely critiquing my clothing choices and my ever changing body as I plowed through each piece. If it was boat-necked, brown, or drop-waist, it’s now en route out on the curb.
I called it quits when Maisy woke up from nap and we went to play dress-up, which entailed Maisy yanking out every dress in the costume box and wearing it for just 45 seconds until she changed her mind. Just like me. Same same, choo choo train.
The one notable difference? Maisy was confident in her fabulous-ness in every frock.
Maisy Joon could teach a master class in self-esteem. Her affirmations were flowing with ease: “Oh! Me going to look so pretty in this dress. Look how beautiful I’s am, mommy! This one going to be SO CUTE on me.”
How great would life be if we had the blind confidence of a two-year-old in a tutu?
Now, I’m not going pull anything back in from my Goodwill pile, because, unlike my two-year-old I possess self-awareness. I’m also not going to take her shopping with me as a hype girl, because the last time she saw my belly button she dry heaved. Seems these affirmations are entirely aimed at oneself. BUT. Maybe I can find some other areas in my life where I can be as unabashedly positive as Maisy. She does seem to draw in new friends wherever she goes – pint-sized proof of how confidence is the most attractive thing we could wear.