Love from, Florence Grace

I love myself. There, I said it. And to be honest, it's no secret - I speak about it all the time across my social media platforms. I am a huge  advocate of body positivity and self love and I spend as much time as I can encouraging other people to love and appreciate themselves and their bodies too. I grew up struggling to like myself, let alone love myself, and now that I've finally learnt to appreciate my body, my mind, every inch of myself, I work so hard to make sure that other people are able to do the same. This was one of the best tweets I ever received... to know that sharing my self love journey so openly online helped to inspire and empower another is the best feeling! It doesn't help that for years and years and years  we have it drummed into our heads that to appreciate our looks is vanity . That to talk about all the things we are achieving and have going on for us is bragging . So often people who love themselves are branded as big head...

*Trigger Warning: Sexual abuse, sexual violence, rape, domestic abuse* Monday 5 th February to Sunday 11 th February is Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week. I find sexual abuse and violence a particularly hard topic to speak about, because I am incredibly passionate about it. Unfortunately, my passion for the topic is not simply down to my compassion for those who go through it; it’s because I have been a victim of sexual abuse and violence myself. It isn’t something I speak about often, if at all. Only a handful of people in my life know anything about it, and whilst I have written an incredibly long and detailed post about my experiences, as a way of ‘healing’, I have never had the courage to press publish. There are a number of reasons for this; I don’t want to be branded a liar . I don’t want the men who made me a victim to come after me - because they quite easily could. I don’t want people to slut shame me, as so often happens to young women ...