I felt like I was too ugly to be seen.

So, I started a YouTube channel (and I hope you'll join me there!).

Photo by Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash

This is hard to admit, but it feels important. And it feels like it’s time.

I’ve been writing on Substack for a year now. Gaining more and more comfort through practice with sharing what moves through me, in the hopes that what I have to offer will be of support to others. It’s been fortifying and liberating to be in dialogue with you in this way.

It’s also felt…safe? Compared to how I knew it would feel for me to take up internet space in the way that other people - people I admire from afar, people from whom I’ve learned a great deal - show up online. It felt safe to share myself in written language. Even to share my voice in audio form, on occasion. But what terrified me most was showing up in a way that required me to show my literal face.

I told myself that I was scared to post videos online because I was afraid that people wouldn’t like what I have to say. That’s not untrue. But there’s a deeper and more complete truth.

I’m most afraid that people won’t like how I look. Will say mean things about how I look. Will confirm for me what I believed for years - that I’m not beautiful enough to be seen. A deep, root-level belief, so old that I don’t remember who I was without it.

Part of how I’m moving this fear through me is by choosing to record and post videos on YouTube. By recognizing that there’s space for my face regardless of whether or not I’m pretty. By holding the possibility that my prettiness (or lack thereof) matters much less than my presence.

People will like how I look, or they won’t. And I now understand that this, whether or not my appearance is pleasing to others, is not actually what determines my beauty. I’m learning that my beauty blossoms in my acceptance of the beauty of how I love. The beauty that lies in the authenticity of my fierce vulnerability, my big feelings, my courageous heart. These are the things I find most beautiful in others. And it’s the expression of beauty that I’m learning to honor in myself.

The most beautiful thing about me will never be a feature of my physical body. It has been and always will be the way that love expresses itself through me.

So, I’m choosing to be seen, heard, felt as that love.

If YouTube is your thing, I invite you to join me over there on my channel, amissaloves. I’m just getting started, and your support would mean the world to me.

Here’s one of my videos, in which I share what I’m learning about how we can redirect the power embedded in our trauma responses toward creating love, rather than maintaining control. A process that supports our capacity to co-create more loving and liberated worlds.

If you’re here, you’re a part of that co-creation. And I thank you for being in that process with me.