How I stopped photographing myself weekly

My experience is that other people's attention was the destabilising thing, more than anything about my own body.

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Orsolya, this is my version of it.

What I would say is that this is harder than the physical side and gets a fraction of the discussion. I am glad this circle exists for it.

Photographs are difficult for me and I have stopped apologising for stepping out of them.

Something that helped was reducing how much I looked. Not as a punishment. Just less often, and it made the looking less loaded.

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

I liked how I looked before as well. That is a complicated thing to say in most places and it is straightforwardly true.

What surprised me was that the difficult feelings did not follow the timeline I expected. My hardest month was much later than I would have predicted.

I have stopped reading anything that presents bodies as a before and a subsequent state. That single decision improved my year measurably.

Something practical: I bought two things that fit, properly, rather than waiting. The waiting was itself a message I was sending myself.

I would gently say that if this has become the main thing you think about, that is worth mentioning to somebody rather than managing alone.

I would have written the same thing a year ago, word for word.

I found the comments from people who had known me a long time hardest, because they carried an implied opinion about before.