This is a portion of that post Chris wrote:
"My mother loves to take selfies, and I remember the moment that I stopped feeling embarrassed by the fact that she does so. It was incredibly hypocritical for me to feel ashamed that she wanted to show off her body, her face, her outfits because if you’ve ever come across my instagram feed you’ll see almost nothing but selfies. But it occurred to me, that my mom, a mother of 4, 50 years old was proud of how she looked, and was demanding to be seen as what she is — a beautiful woman (among a million other brilliant qualities).
She deserved to be told that, to get those likes and comments, even if they were from strangers. If she wanted to own her image, her space in this world and in cyberspace, and she felt good... who was I or anyone to stop her from feeling GOOD about herself? I instead realized I was proud of my mom for feeling good about herself, for owning her sexuality, and for loving herself. My mother taught me a lot in this lifetime, one of the most important lessons being the importance of self-love."
I responded with a comment:
"Making me cry, Chris Rhodes. I love you! I'm not the greatest example for anyone but I sure did something right raising my kids because all of you are confident, loving and care a lot about your dad and I, our family, your friends and so much more. And ... life is too short not to spend some amount of that time loving and believing in yourself! I want all you kids to be able to look in the mirror or at a picture of yourself and be able to think, "You're beautiful, you're important and I love you. I will take care of you because you are the person I depend on to make me the happiest."
Self-love is something we all struggle with from time to time, me included. Self-love becomes and is more of a struggle for individuals with identity or gender dysphoria, obviously. Can you imagine spending your whole life or even portions of your life, looking in the mirror and not identifying with the face and/or body you see - over and over and over and over and over again? Can you imagine that you might develop a hatred for that image, that person? I'm like so many other people that wished or hoped something about my image or reflection looked differently, and there have been many times when I felt disappointment when seeing my image, but I have always loved the face and body God gave me, while I may not have always taken as good care of it as I should have. What I have experienced in my life is not dysphoria, and truthfully, I believe, unless you are an individual who has or does live with dysphoria then we have really no clue what it must be like to live and survive with such a sadness, disappointment and confusion.
Chris is and has been dealing with his dysphoria for a long time - to the point, now, that he knows what he must do to fix the problem. He is making and taking all the steps he has to to make sure his reflection in the mirror matches the person he feels like and identifies with on the inside. I'm proud to be his mother and I'm proud to be a person in his life that helped him know the importance of self-love, because, like I said in my comment to his post, that person in the mirror is the person you should always depend on to make you the happiest.
As for me, I've had many people gravitate to me in my life - people saying, "You have such a great feeling about you - you are someone I wanted to meet." My response has often been, "You think I am special because I think I am special." It's not like I go out into the world believing I will draw people to me or knowing it will happen, it just does, and I have come to realize that they want to be near me because they want to be a part of my light. I pride myself on nurturing my own light, every day, and I simply love sharing it with others. There is nothing wrong with that. It's called self-love.
Our first love and last love is ... self-love <3
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