Badassery Magazine February 2018 Issue 21 | Page 31

C
onfidence is controver-
sial. Some people think it’s
just pure ego, (who does
she think she is!?). Most of us stay
stuck in the “Fake it till you make
it” without ever quite “making it”.
That was totally me for the lon-
gest time. This is the story of how
I made it over the elusive rainbow.
Oh, and no, it’s not ego, it’s Divine
awareness. But I won’t get into that
here.
my thoughts were unruly tod-
dlers, I told myself that anytime a
negative thought would roll up in
my self-talk that I would simply
distract it, like a damn ninja. And
much to my surprise, it WORKED!
“You are worthless and stupid, no
one wants to hear you talk!” turned
into “Holy shit, kittens are adorable
right!? Oh, also, you don’t suck that
bad.” And I called it a WIN!
With time I got better at it! I start-
ed judging myself less and loving
myself more, even when it didn’t
make sense or seem necessary to
love myself (kinda like being proud
of a baby who poops) but it was
still a LOT of work…
Then shit got REAL when my
boy was struggling with his
place in the world… he would
say things to me like “Why do
Hi! My name is Amber, and I am
confident AF! But I haven’t always
been. In fact, I was one of the most
painfully shy people I’ve ever seen
in real life, oh yeah, and I HATED
myself! Not in the typical way that
so many women do, like legit H-A-
T-E. Sure severe depression had a
lot to do with it, I also believed that
I just was an awful person who de-
served to suffer… So that sucked…
One day while being particularly
mean to myself (yelling at my arms
in the mirror) I heard it… a voice
that clearly said, “Are you real-
ly going to keep hating her for the
rest of her life?!”
Woah. What was THAT!? Who the
fuck said that and where did they
come from?
This, my friends, was a life-chang-
ing moment. I knew as soon as I
heard the voice that I, in fact, could
not continue with the hatred. I. Just.
Couldn’t. I had NO idea how to
NOT hate myself… I was GOOD at
it. It was my constant companion,
but I knew in that moment that if I
ever found out that my son spoke
to himself the way I was speaking
to myself I would be DEVASTAT-
ED, so I committed to myself to
stop.
I decided to try to pretend that
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