My Stream of Consciousness: March 2011

It's my honor to introduce you to a project that not only changed my life, but the lives of people all over the world. I figured that I'd post the video from the founder (Tommy Corey), verses writing about it, so you can hear it from him personally of how he went about starting this wonderful and admirable project.

To learn more visit: http://www.selfworthproject.com/

Tommy asked if I would be interested in participating in the project and without hesitation, I told him I'd be honored. :) Here's my picture.

Imperfection: not perfect; defective or inadequate.

In short- I'm in the industry of modeling and in modeling, and I'm told on a daily basis that I'm never good enough. The comments rage from: you're too heavy, stop eating, smoke to curve your cravings, dress a certain way, your eye brows are too thin, you should consider breast implants, etc. I chose the word, "Imperfection" because of this and I used a cigarette as a prop to show why most models smoke; we all have to maintain a certain weight, size, and shape, because that is how the industry works--skinny always wins.

Throughout all of this pressure to be "perfect", I developed an unexplainable lack of confidence and constantly started doubting my self-worth. Anorexia became a mild temptation and I was entertaining the idea of getting my breasts augmented.

In closing, no matter what anyone tells you, you are all born with certain features for a reason. Be comfortable in your skin, embrace the beauty you have been given, and be proud that you have your own unique look. We are all created differently and that's a fact--- SO EMBRACE IT. :)

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to be apart of this project. I truly appreciate it and after doing this project, I can easily say, I'm proud to be perfectly imperfect.

I was invited to speak at a Senior retreat as a camp counselor and I was asked to share a personal and yet, influential story of my life. My Junior year was the most challenging year for me and when I posted this last time, I had received over 40 emails from readers saying how reading this helped them through their own life crisis. The overwhelming responses touched my heart and therefore, I wanted to be bold and re-post this as my first entry.

My Junior Year

By: Jessica Cook

A women once said, “Change is inevitable, but yet we fight it, just the same. Change is essential to our evolution. Change is going to happen, in fact, it happens every day. Maybe it is too small to see, or perhaps we would rather not see it. We fight change, because we fight the unknown. We fight the unknown, because we are scared, scared of change, scared of the unknown. If we were to allow change to happen freely, we might find solutions to the problems that exist around us, but instead, we are hung - up on controlling everything around us. Maybe this is the problem with the world today. Everyone assumes control of everything and does not allow nature to run her course. Maybe this is why, we have devastating fall out from Nature, Natural catastrophic disasters, such as fire and flooding. We fight change, therefore we are fighting nature and her natural being and her existence in the world that she has created by God's hand and has graciously allowed us to be a part of. We should welcome change and allow nature to control our destiny. Change is uncontrollable, Change is inevitable, and Change is the unknown. Nature takes pride in being one of life's misleading wonders, the unknown.”

I had a big change my junior year. This was a year where my life did a one hundred and eighty degrees turn. On the first day of school, I felt unwelcome by my junior class. Over summer my family and I toured the United States on motorcycles and I hung out with some friends, with the only week left of summer. Cliques formed and I wasn’t included in any. At the time I had three best friends, Ginny, Chelsea , and my grandmother. Ginny went to Germany for the year to study abroad and Chelsea and I were pretty inseparable, which was great, because we had each other and weren’t labeled into a clique. Chelsea and I sat with the seniors, sophomores, or freshmen during lunch. We never sat with our class.

As the year went on, I found myself in the hospital more than spending time in school. Everyday after school, I would spend a half an hour to sometimes two hours visiting my grandmother in ICU. My grandmother was in there for several reasons, but she was very sick, nonetheless. With a positive attitude, I would go home and pray the rosary and I wasn’t even Catholic, but I heard if you pray, it could lessen the damage. Every time I walked out of that door of the ICU, I always looked back and said, “I love you Grandma. I’ll be praying for you. Everything is going to be alright. I promise.” Two months went by and she was going downhill. By then she had IV’s all up and down her frail arms, and the nurses began to heavily sedate her, to numb her pain. I did my normal routine, even though she was sedated and I pulled up the green, leather chair from the corner and told her about my day and what has been going on in my life lately. The following day, I noticed a tube going down her throat and she was heavily sedated. For the next five days she was so knocked out that I thought it was ridiculous to even talk to her. “Why talk to a vegetable?” I thought. After school Monday, I went again to see her, this time for fifteen minutes. Still sedated with a tube down her throat, I’d asked her if she would go to my graduation. I was so fed up with the way she looked and how she didn’t respond or nod to anything I was saying, I told my dad I was ready to leave, and this time I didn’t turn back. That day, she passed away.

I didn’t go to school for the next two days. And after those two days, tears poured till the end of the week. I lost my best friend and it was the worst feeling in the world. The following month my grandfather broke his hip and stayed in the hospital for two months. Yet again, everyday I visited him after school. This agony, stress, and responsibility grew larger every day and when I thought all would come to an end, my brother Ken, attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo , was rushed to the hospital, because he bled internally. It was so dire that he received several blood transfusions. This worrying and depression took a toll on my grades. My GPA slipped to a 2.3.

Just think to yourself, think about not being able to have anyone in your class to vent to. I had NO friends in my class, besides Chelsea , basically. I was so depressed I’d go talk to my teachers during lunch time and just cry. I was so depressed that I isolated myself from the seniors, freshmen, and sophomores….and I would just have lunch with a teacher.

Two months later my grandpa broke his hip again, due to having too much to drink one night and falling. Furthermore, I spent everyday in the hospital again for another two months. I was so fed up with hospitals, that I didn’t think it would ever get better.

A couple weeks after my grandfather got out of the hospital, Chelsea and I got into a huge argument about politics and I lost my best friend. She transferred out of school 3 days later. Now I was solely by myself, with one friend to talk overseas to. I just wanted to die. I hated every second of life. I questioned God through prayer, “WHY ME? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”

In May of 2006, I received a phone call from my brother Mike saying that we needed to go to Los Angeles and I asked, “Why?” He informed me that my mother overdosed on Norco (which is a pain killer), took fifty pills, and was rushed to ICU. If we didn’t get there by tomorrow, we were never going to see her again. My brother told me that he’d pick me up in 10 minutes, so be ready. My mother and my father divorced when I was in sixth grade, due my mother alcoholism and over dosage on prescription drugs and I never forgave how she treated me or my brothers. So every time I saw her, I would treat her with so much disrespect.

My brother picked me up and we drove nine straight hours. We rushed into the ward, meeting my other brother, and peered into the glass. She had a large tube down her throat and she was sedated. The nurse told us that we couldn’t wake her, because they just put her to sleep. So we sat there regretting how we treated her for the past years and never forgiving her. As we sobbed into each others arms, the nurse told us that we had to leave, because we weren’t allowed to stay there for over thirty minutes. We left and spent the night in L.A. The next morning we had to leave, so my brothers and I went to a local plant shop, bought her a card and a beautiful plant. We took it up to her, still heavily sedated. Yet again, the nurse said that we could only stay there for thirty minutes. It was Mother’s day that day.

We left L.A. and drove back home, with a horrible feeling in our stomachs. I arrived at home at 12 O’ clock at night. I didn’t eat and I laid on my bed, and cried myself to sleep. The following school day, was the beginning of finals. With lack of sleep, being on a emotional rollercoaster, and not being able to eat- I crammed for finals. I ended up failing most of my finals.

In the end, my mother survived. And I survived the hardest year of my life. I never came to school without a smile on my face, through all of that. It was insanely tough, believe me, which proves the saying, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.