Knew you were awesome?

Thought I'd share this, shared on Bettyland this week...

There was a time when you were five years old, and you woke up full of awesome.
You knew you were awesome.
You loved yourself.
You thought you were beautiful, even with missing teeth and messy hair and mismatched socks inside your grubby sneakers.
You loved your body, and the things it could do.
You thought you were strong.
You knew you were smart.
Do you still have it?
The awesome.
Did someone take it from you?
Did you let them?
Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?
Why the hell would you listen to them?
Did you consider they might be full of shit?

Sadly if the people telling you different are your parents, then the niggles of doubt and the lack of confidence and finally the self-hatred begins early, really early. You may have never even have had the chance to become the child in this poem.

But hopefully Tom Robbins was right when he wrote: "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."