If you don’t love your skin, the places you and your ancestors have been and the shades of many before them; What is thick and thin, who will?

If you don’t love your hair, your natural texture, colour, consistency and length; How it shines, uniquely you, under the sun and moon, as it was each time, as a child having fun… who will?

If you don’t love your crinkles, wrinkles, dimples, lines and what makes you simple, who will?

If you don’t love your eyes, their light, lids, glimmers and surprise, who will?

If you don’t love your teeth, no matter their shade and glade or how small or large; Smooth or crooked. Who will?

If you don’t love your nose, each bump a history of who you have been, and how it sits so lovingly in the middle of your face to help you breathe. Who will?

If you don’t love your body, each curve and straight line, each stretch mark, each scar, each ‘deformity’, that is simply, beautifully different. Who else will?

If you don’t love your own mind, the way you think in your most cynical moments, and in your most wisest moments; No matter how little or large the mistake. Who will?

If you don’t love your ears, no matter how round and large they are, or how small and straight, how outward or inward. Who will?

If you don’t love your presence, the way you stance, the way you magnetise, the way you light up the world, the way you feel. Who will?

If you don’t love your smile, the way your teeth amplify and stretch across your face, and the way your cheeks hug your lips. Who will?

If you don’t love your expression, how you gesture when you are being yourself, and how you behave as you speak. Who will?

If you don’t love your own lips, the way they articulate to form a language, the way they purse when you kiss, the way they protect your teeth and smile when you laugh hysterically; The way they help you to eat a hearty meal. Who will?

If you don’t choose love, who will?
If you don’t challenge hate, who will?
If you don’t, who will?
If you cannot love what is all or any of you— why? How will you change that?
If you don’t choose your own will; Hate will.
If you don’t love your own will, you’ll only hate your own will.

So— love and choose, yourself.

© Lois Christina