It's All In The Eyes
What you might see when you look at this picture is a physical transformation. My size, my shininess, the polish of my look. What I see, is the change in my eyes.

I see a young woman whose eyes reflect the numbness, the emptiness, the lack of feeling she chose to use to protect herself from a tough upbringing. One where she never could trust that anyone or anything she loved would stick around. One where it was far safer to bury your emotions and needs than to have them.
Depression helped me numb. Depression is what I see in those eyes.
I used to be ashamed of this girl, I used to hide her from my current circle, but I’ve done a lot of work on myself to instead have nothing but immense empathy for her. And to share her beauty with all of you.
Now, when I look at pictures of myself, I check in with those eyes to gauge how I’m really doing. It helps me see if that brain fog is starting to set in. Here’s a picture from another time when I hit a rough patch. And while physically I look more like I do now, those eyes tell a different story. Those eyes are warning me that it’s time to work a bit harder on coming back to balance.

The physical stuff I do helps bring me back to that balance, maintain it, and fight like hell sometimes not to have those blank eyes creep back into the picture:
- I exercise far more for my brain than my body. Nothing sets me up better for my day than a workout, it gives me a sense of accomplishment like nothing else can. It proves to my brain every day, I can, in fact, overcome tough stuff, and I can actually enjoy the struggle.
- The physical benefits of exercise for me are more driven by a fear that I’m still working on. I don’t ever want to end up with the slew of health trauma and drama that my parents dealt with. I don’t want to end up needing as much help as my mom did before she passed, and I don’t want to die at 56 like my dad did.
- I eat whole food 80% of the time because my mindfulness practice has made me so aware of my body that I can feel foods that don’t serve it, and I don’t like that feeling. (But I always have something sweet, and not “whole” every day. :))
- I swear I can taste the love in food, and that drives a lot of my choices. I’ll gobble up chips and salsa or delicious, greasy takeout from a local place, where the owners are likely a part of the everyday operation, and feel great about it. Not every day, but usually once per week. And I have zero interest in getting this food from a chain.
After mindfulness helped me get to a place where I wanted to focus more on the physical I used to say, “I don’t want to let genetics win.” Now, I know there is only so much of that under my control. It’s far more accurate for me to say that maintaining physical health is a HUGE piece of the puzzle to maintaining my mental health. And that I believe mental health drives a lot of the choices that make us healthier or feel sick.
The sense of accomplishment from the workout, the overcoming a literal hill on a run or the adrenaline of lying sweaty on the floor after a JessSimsBootCamp helps me push past the need to go numb that still lives in me. The feeling of content fullness after a meal of foods that buzz happily in my body, from my own love-soaked kitchen or that of another, helps me ward off that emptiness in my eyes.
As always, I will leave you with this. What helps keep your eyes alive and bright might be very different than what sparks mine. And it has so very little to do with shape or size.
As long as you feel fully present and full of life in that home in your body, that’s what matters. THAT’s what true balance feels like. And that is what I wish for all of you. 💗

