The author of the book above is on the cover of the October/November issue of Women’s Health. I received the magazine two days ago. This weekend I checked her book out of a library. I recommend you buy the guide.

Her SPEAK manifesto is shorthand for Surrender Power Empathy Authenticity Knowledge.

Tunde tells readers to “lead with empathy.” She recounts her struggle with not liking her muscular arms.

Tunde is a Peloton bike instructor who reaches 20,000 cyclists in her motivational workout sessions. She is a face of Revlon cosmetics and a Nike apparel athlete.

Tunde’s book and the pep talks she gave in it touched me. I have the opposite experience of Tunde and other young women. I didn’t think I had to conform or should choose to conform to have other teens accept me.

By the time I was only 6 years old I was bullied. At the same time I was taught my ABCs I learned that the other kids didn’t like me. An outsider from that early age I had no one I thought I should impress.

Often I read first-person accounts of women who tried to starve themselves thin to fit in or get others to like them. They had body image issues like Tunde.

It is not a compliment it’s racist and insulting to tell a person like Tunde: “You’re pretty for a Black girl” or “You’d be pretty if you lost weight.”

I had no admirers either secret ones or others who gave me comments like that.

As for Tunde’s take on Authenticity I’ll get at her abiding belief in my own words: “When you show up as yourself great things happen.”

Secrecy breeds shame. Hiding who you are–and keeping in a closet the parts of yourself you think no one will like or approve of–causes ill health.

My mother doesn’t understand how I could’ve recovered from the bullying in a way where I don’t often think or talk of it. Yet the reality was 6-year old girls had already become bullies and I was their target. Up until I turned 14 and went to a different school.

This treatment should have been the tip-off that as an adult I’d be attacked for speaking out to say that recovery is possible.

Whether it’s from racism like Tunde experienced, ageism, mental or physical illness, political division or anything else we struggle with my mission in this lifetime is to promote recovery and healing.

In the coming blog entry I’ll review the second book I checked out of the library: True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-acceptance Revolution.

A chip is not the kind of accessory we should be carrying on our shoulder. We each of us have the power to change our lives for the better regardless of our circumstance.

It starts when we take to heart the Tunde-isms in SPEAK and begin speaking up for ourselves.

The subtitle tells it all: Get from where you are to where you want to be. Like Tunde I believe it’s possible to do this.