The Body Image Series: A conversation with Shelly Davies

With Bettina Tornatora

Shelly has been one of New Zealand top trainers in business and technical writing for nearly a decade. Her brand is all about joy and badassery and her work is so much more than writing an email or report in plain language. She supports people to find their authentic and most powerful voice. She is a Mum and a grandmother and has had a journey with her body.

Today she is fit and strong and in a healthy body but still has a shitty relationship with food.

The journey for Shelly was she was the youngest of 4 sisters and her Mum worried about weight and had sisters were all on diets.

This made her feel that she had to look a certain way to be loveable and be accepted in the world.

Remembers saving $5k for a cruise then decided to put money away for surgery instead.

Now 10 yrs ago.

Lost 60kg and all inhibitions.

Lots of learning around this process.

Loved self before surgery. Surgery is a tool, not an answer.

And surgery does not make you like yourself.

What discovered was how much energy she used, to feel happy and confident with a heavy body.

Pretty constant journey and struggle. 

Choosing to change your physical body is one thing, but won’t make you love yourself or feel happy. How do we chose the healthy version of your body without punishment.

Love yourself to a place of power.

You cannot hate or punish yourself to a body that you love. 

How do we match the outside to the inside. Who are we truly and authentically. How do we show our identity?

What kind of connections could we create so that people could connect deeply for each other. What might our collective look like if we all sat down and shared from our heart.

Everyone needs a safe place to land. It is different for everyone but so important. 

Then we can be bold enough to be ourselves and do life the way we want. And then use peoples responses as just a filter.

Remove the people that are in your world that are harmful or hurtful. Surround yourself in goodness. Ask yourself how does this environment make me feel? Am I more of authentic self or less of myself her in this space?

How can we have the level of self love that we can say YES and NO conscientiously.

Trust that the journey you walk, especially the hard ones, support others on theirs. 

Parenting from this place of empowerment: Sharing the journey with your children. All the pain and process being worth it in the end. 

How do you celebrate yourself more and more every year and love ourselves even more.

Being in love with what you do with your own body. Whether fitness, surgery or any other action. Maybe if we all showed more compassion around this and less judgement of each other it would be easier for everyone.

Both internally and externally how do we speak to ourselves? Can we look in the mirror and love what we see, instead of hating on ourselves.

Using the word YET to reflect the journey we are on. 

Bring the dialogue out so we can hear it and learn from it raising awareness.