As someone who has experienced obesity and everything that comes with it, physically, emotionally and socially, I look back now and recognise a kind of suffering that many people living with obesity know all too well.
Both men and women who have been through, or are currently going through, this experience may know exactly what I’m talking about.
It’s the pain of being unseen.
It breaks my heart, honestly, to realise just how unseen people living in larger bodies can feel.
Unseen at their core. Unseen in their spiritual essence. In everything that makes them who they are. What makes them laugh, what makes them cry, what excites them. Their passions, their love, their anger, their anguish, their longing.
Many of them walk this earth unseen.
And they’re not invisible, either.
That’s perhaps even worse.
They may sometimes wish they were invisible, so they could hide inside their shells and simply go about their lives without feeling the pain of judgement, rejection or disdain from those who hold different standards of how one should look or live.
But instead, they must carry the feeling of being noticed without necessarily being seen.
***
To much of the outside world, they may be recognised first and foremost by their weight, often perceived as a visible sign of poor health.
But is there anything more that people see?
Is there anything beyond the casual conversation with a stranger or an acquaintance? Beyond the surface of who they appear to be?
I’m certainly not here to generalise. But this was my experience, time and time again.
I was there, yet somehow I wasn’t really there.
Present in a group of people, but not truly seen.
Let’s acknowledge those beautiful, awakened souls who carry so much love in their hearts that their gaze reaches far beyond physical appearances. Those who recognise souls rather than bodies.
But what about everyone else?
What do they see?
***
I was that woman in a group setting who tried to compensate by showing how much she knew. How educated, well-read, sophisticated, even philosophical she was.
As though I needed to prove there was something worth discovering beneath my appearance.
And still, I didn’t feel seen.
Not for who I really was.
And now, I have to say it again: my heart breaks for that woman. For the pain she so carefully disguised.
A pain carried quietly in the hearts of so many people. A pain that can deepen their suffering and sometimes even contribute to the very circumstances they are struggling to change.
Speaking specifically as a woman, I can only speak from my own experience.
And as sad as it is, sometimes it takes a physical transformation for certain men to begin looking at a woman differently.
Not necessarily seeing her.
Just looking at her.
But it starts with looking, doesn’t it?
And even then, she may enter relationships in which she remains unseen.
Until, perhaps, she comes to realise one tiny thing.
She herself hasn’t been looking.
To be loved, to be truly loved, is to be seen.
And that kind of seeing must begin within.
The transformation that matters most, the one that can cascade into every aspect of your life, begins when you learn to love yourself.
You look.
You see.
You love.
And then you see even more.
You confront what you find. You might frown. You might not like everything you discover.
But instead of turning away, you shine a light.
You look closer.
And the more you see, the more you learn to love.
It goes on until your vision of yourself becomes crystal clear.
You finally see you.
And you discover that this person has been there all along, patiently waiting for you to look.
To turn on the light.
To ponder.
To see.
To love.
To smile.
To laugh.
And perhaps to cry.
And say:
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I haven’t looked.
I’m sorry I haven’t seen.
I’m sorry I haven’t loved you.
Just as you are.
You deserve love, just like any other soul, regardless of how polished its meat suit may be.
And something begins to change.
You become the woman who shows up for herself every single day.
And perhaps that’s when others begin to look a little deeper, too.
Even if only ever so slightly.
Even when years of conditioning have taught them to look no further than appearances.
Your chances of being truly met, of being seen from the outside, may begin to grow.
But because you are no longer hiding from your own gaze.
You have created a safe space within yourself.
A space where you can finally show up exactly as you are.
And the people who are willing and able to truly see you can meet you there.
❤️
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