I would like to share with you the road God has been leading me personally and Blessed Bodywear as a company.
Many of you have been supporting me personally, and as a company, since 2007 when I started my first brand, Fizeek Brazil. You have walked side by side with me as that company grew, split into Beleza Brazil, and then in 2016 became Blessed Bodywear. The evolution has paralleled my evolution as a woman.
When I first started Fizeek Brazil, I was a National Level Figure Competitor fighting for my Pro Card and a Fitness model who traveled the world with my husband, shooting in exotic locations. But inside I was a woman searching for my worth in my accomplishments, and never truly fulfilled. After we got married, God called me to become a mom, although in the natural there was no way for that to happen.
Of course, in my head I had pictured that IG mom life that would basically be an extension to the glamorous life I was living, but God had better plans. Many of you have followed our journey as foster parents, fostering over ten children, and ultimately adopting our three kids and raising four to this day. As you can imagine, the woman who started Fizeek Brazil, the fierce competitor and fitness model, although just as fierce today, has evolved and is not the same woman writing this to you today.
Over the last year, I have spent a lot of time thinking about Blessed Bodywear, who we are, and where we are going as a brand. As a designer and creator, my designs are an extension of who I am so in order to do that I had to stop and think about the road I travelled and who I am today.
I had to accept that I used to be a woman who tried to mould herself into what the world told me I should be. It made me go through years of Yo-Yo dieting and low self-esteem. I started my journey as a Fitness Competitor, mistakingly thinking if my body looked a certain way, all my insecurities would immediately be gone. But, as with all lies, the harder I worked to fit that mould, the more I felt trapped in it.
I spent two decades of my life extreme dieting, long hours at the gym, two breast implant surgeries, straightening my hair daily, Botox and fillers and a never-ending quest to create body shape and symmetry.
Let me say this loud and clear, I DO NOT THINK there is anything wrong with any of those things, I support a woman who wants to take good care of her body and feel good about herself, as long as these things are not needed to give you worth. For me, they were bandaids hiding my pain. I didn’t know who I was or my worth and thought those things game me value.
When I became a mom to two little girls and imagined my babies telling themselves in the mirror the same horrible things I used to tell myself. I knew it had to stop.
It was time for a REVOLUTION.
A Revolution is a sudden, radical, or complete change. Breaking free from what the world tells us we NEED to be and do in order to be accepted. The constant visual bombarding of what we should look like, from the time we are little kids, is a manipulative lie.
I am here to tell you there is nothing wrong with your height, weight, hair, face and color of your skin. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. You don’t need filters on your photos. You have earned the wrinkles on your face.
The stripes on your stomach from the beautiful babies you created should be something you are proud of and not ashamed. Your time at the gym will make you healthy and give you a better quality of life EVEN if your butt doesn’t fit in those old jeans.
I am here to tell you that your kids don’t care how you look in a bikini, they only care that you are having fun with them. Your husband finds you the sexiest when you love and accept yourself, not when you are hyper focused on every flaw. Your true friends will be there for you not because of what you do, but because of who you are.
I am grateful for those agonizing years. They have built my testimony while I was learning many valuable lessons along the way, such as discipline, self-control and hard work. I was never free. I was captive to my thoughts and anxiety.
I have learned that freedom comes from love. And perfect love only comes from our creator. Accepting that we are the work of God allows us to see and love ourselves and everything that makes us different from what the world tells us we need to be. Only at this point do we find peace, and only at this point are we able to embrace true Health and Fitness.
We are in the world. But we do NOT have to be of the world.
Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it. Right is right, even if no one is doing it.
God Bless, Ana Tigre
These are the new REVOLUTION shirts in women’s and mens styles and sizes.
Available now on Blessedbodywear.com
