A Girl and Her Tattoos

I am excited to share this submission from Stephanie of Drunk on Vogue. While I not only love connecting with this fellow Richmond area fashion blogger on the regular, I also am grateful to have a platform to share her thought-provoking first-person account of how we can be both our own worst enemies and our own saviors. Especially in light of the news about Demi Lovato’s career change up…

During her vacation to Ft. Lauderdale, Stephanie dawned a regular wardrobe of swimsuits and sunscreen, including her dainty three-chain necklace from Rocksbox.  (Use code drunkonvoguexoxo to receive your first month of Rocksbox for free!)  After you check out her gorgeous photos, notice her tattoos and then read her personal essay below.

“ I’d like to take this moment to talk about something incredibly personal to me.  You may notice a tattoo on my hip.  It rarely shows, unless I’m in a swimsuit, because of its location, but I always get asked about what it means, and this particular shoot seemed like the perfect opportunity to share.  My tattoo is two separate symbols entwined together.  The first symbol is a heart, but not just any heart.  The heart is the same one that Demi Lovato uses to dot the “i” in her signature.  The second symbol is the National Eating Disorder Association emblem. 

Now, you might be asking why I chose to etch these onto my skin.  If you know anything about Demi Lovato, you may know that, at one point, she struggled with some serious substance abuse issues, along with bipolar disorder, depression and self harm, an eating disorder, and more. (In 2012, she shared her full story with MTV).  However, she also overcame these challenges, and is now an advocate for body positivity and staying strong through all that life may throw your way.  This is a woman that I had looked up to for years prior to her public announcement of what was going on behind the scenes, and watching her rise above and become a better person through it all encouraged me that I could do the same.

You see, I struggled with many of the same difficulties.  I never dealt with any extreme bullying from others as a child, but as I grew up, I became my own bully.  I told myself that I wasn’t enough, and that I certainly wasn’t beautiful.  I told myself that I weighed too much, and that in order to be pretty, I needed a thigh gap and a flat belly, for my ribs to show and my arms to be stick thin.  I wanted to be what the media showed me was “perfect.” So I started my journey into the worst years of my life, struggling with anorexia nervosa. 

I starved myself.  I worked out so hard that I would pass out from exhaustion.  I did this to myself until I was merely skin and bones, and my body practically shut down.  Yet, every day, I would wake up and see myself in the mirror and tell myself that I was still too big.  My thighs were still touching and I wanted my collar bones to be more pronounced.  It was painful. My body physically hurt.  My hair was falling out and my cheeks had begun to sink into my face.  My family and friends became so worried for me.  They tried to help me eat, and they tried their absolute hardest to show me that what I was doing was harming myself. 

It wasn’t until Christmas Eve one year, when I had to be rushed into the doctor’s office because I couldn’t even keep the food I wanted to eat in my stomach, that I realized how far I had gone.  I had shrunk my stomach so drastically that even liquids could barely fit inside.  If I wasn’t able to eat a cracker or two by the next morning, I would need to be put into a rehabilitation center so that they could do a “forced healing.”  Christmas morning, I woke up and looked in the mirror, for the first time noticing the scary changes that had taken over who used to be Stephanie.  I made it my mission to recover and to be healthy again.  That day I ate a tiny sliver of pizza (one of the reasons that pizza is my favorite food now) and experienced a Christmas miracle as it stayed in my stomach and over the next several days, weeks, and months, I slowly regained my appetite and my stomach expanded, allowing me to eat and grow again.  

I am saying so much of this for a few reasons.  The first reason being that doing this photo shoot was incredibly challenging for me.  Exposing this much of my body put me in a very vulnerable situation, because while I am considerably recovered from my eating disorder, body dysmorphia is incredibly real every day of my life.  I still wake up and struggle with my weight, though I know I’m perfectly fit the way I am.  It will always be a challenge, but I learned so much from what I went through, and I will never put myself in that compromising situation again.  I will forever do my best to help others with their struggle. 

The second reason I wanted to talk about this is that when I posted one of these photos on Instagram, I received many compliments, along with several “body goals” comments.  Not that I don’t appreciate all the encouragement, but I want for your body to be “goals.”  My body is mine for a reason.  It would be boring if everyone looked the same.  I will be the first to admit that I have looked to other girls and models as body goals at different times in my life, but in reality, I will never look like them, no matter what I do to change myself.  And I have learned to be alright with that. 

So, I permanently marked my body with symbols reminding me of what I have overcome, and what I can continue to overcome every single day.  Hopefully, sharing a tiny portion of my story will help someone else who is struggling.  I want every single person who reads this to know that they can talk with me.  I never want anyone else to go through the pain that I went through, and if I can help just one person through a challenge like this in any way, I will.  I will stop at nothing to help a beautiful human being see and believe just how incredibly precious and flawless they are.  Because it’s true, every single person reading this right now is phenomenal, with so much purpose and life and beauty in their completely individual skin.  I could go on forever about this topic, and maybe at some point I will make it into a blog series, but for now, this is my story.  Please let me hear yours.”

Read Stephanie’s full post here. 

Follow her killer Instagram here. 

What did you think about Stephanie’s piece? How about her beautiful photos?

Have your own outfit or essay submission? Send me an email at sweetsauceblog@gmail.com. 

Linked up with Pumps and Pushups, Shopping My Closet, The Pleated Poppy, Garay Treasures, Classy Yet Trendy, and Color and Grace.