With the arrival of fall, I’m reminiscing on the summer and how the warm weather months always prompt a resurgence of the insecurities women feel about their bodies. The pressure to have a “summer body” or “beach body” suddenly permeates the air, the feeds and the mind, as if the body you inhabit should be strangely interchangeable depending on the temperature. With so much anti-body, anti-self, and anti-positivity in the air, my July 28th Self-Love Meet-Up was nothing short of apropos. Thank you to Starbucks for sponsoring this event and ShopBando + CRWN Mag for providing additional items for our goodie bags.

The weather broke from its pattern of thunderstorming -#blessed- so it was nothing but blue skies, sun rays and an unspoken consensus in the air to soak up as much good as possible. As guests arrived for our picnic style Meet-up, all the pieces began to fall into place: Union Square Park, check! Friends, check! A brunch inspired spread, I grabbed with my Starbucks Rewards Visa Card that helps me meet the needs of any small or grand get-together, Check! Check! Check!

We began with light yoga meant ease tensions and traumas carried in the body, from there we expelled our insecurities onto paper and then, passed them on to someone else but in an exercise to put them down but also to engage with the reality that for the most part, we’re all insecure about the same things. These things majority of the time being physical and related to our appearance and how we believe people are perceiving us. On the flip side, when we discussed the things we loved about ourselves those things were intangible, things no one can take away from us.

In the end we realized, the power really is in us to control what standard we allow ourselves to be judged against. As Scarlett Hao said, “Clothes were made for us, not us for clothes. Once clothes are making us change or making us uncomfortable then we need to redistribute the power lines.” The standard needs to open, to expand and become wide enough to fit all the many different ways that okay to have a body and express self.

Confidence, we all agreed, gets easier as we get older. We all know that kids don’t care, it’s one the best things about them; they’re fearless and without shame. But as soon as kids get into that muddy space of childhood and up, its becomes so important to instill self love in them because the world most definitely won’t.

We’ve all got just one body, the body that carries us and keeps us. Be kind to your body;  thank it for supporting you, regardless of the season.

*Chase credit cards are issued by Chase Bank USA, N.A.