Beautiful things - jaylor story (peace book 4)

bora bora

** monday august 8th, 2033**

-Taylors Pov-

We reach our hut in bora bora and its incredibly beautiful. The water is this beautiful teal blue but it's also crystal clear. You can see the bottom of the sea so clearly, that's how clear it is. This is where we are taking our family vacation this year, just me, joe and the girls. We try to get away somewhere for a week once a year to get away from the busy nature of our everyday life. Now that the kids are older, they get to help decide where we go too, and we have so much fun deciding it and planning activities that we can do together.

"mommy look at the water!" Kenzie says as we walk across the bridge over to the huge hut we have for the week. It's the biggest one they had so the girls get their own rooms; joe and I get a room and then there is a living room. There is also a private porch with a pool and lounge chairs. "It really is pretty" I agree. Our luggage gets delivered and joe puts everyone's luggage in their rooms.

It's still early in the day when we get here, it's not even lunchtime and we slept on the plane, so we decide that the best thing to do is get into our bathing suits and go for a swim. All the kids can swim independently so that makes it easier to be in a place like this than it was when they were younger.

"Kids remember to come here and get sunscreen before you go outside" I tell them after I slip into my own bikini and joe rubs sunscreen on my back. I'm not wearing any makeup and my hair is up in a bun. I'm pretty laidback today and it's nice to just be together all of us.

Ellie comes in with her coverup on and has her arms crossed over her chest clearly uncomfortable. "what's wrong Ellie" I ask her and brush the stray hair out of her face. She is on the verge of tears so I take her with me to her bedroom so we can be alone away from the other girls.

"Mom, am I going to look fat" she whimpers. "No Ellie. You're beautiful. You're judging your body way more harshly than anyone else is" she has been doing good but is nowhere near in a healthy mindset yet. Recovering from a severe eating disorder can take years and its often two steps forward and one back. Recovery is never linear, it's more like a rollercoaster.

"You... do you want me to cover up? So that people don't look at me and see how disgusting I am" she says and look away. I lift her chin so that she is looking at me "you're not telling yourself nice things right now. You're being mean to yourself, and those things aren't true. I would never want you to cover up your body Ellie, you're perfect just the way you are. There isn't any part of you that's disgusting"

It's probably hard for her to accept her healthy body, I totally get that. It took me a while to be able to be comfortable in a bikini again, but once I got over the worst of it I started to stop focusing all my energy on what I looked like and instead used that energy to experience the place I was in. I took my eyes away from my reflection in the mirror and shifted it towards the beauty of the world around me.

We share a long hug and I wipe away her tears before we go and join the others that are already out by the water. I quickly rub sunscreen all over Ellie before we go out in the blazing heat.

I take off my coverup and make a run for the ocean and jump off the porch into the water with a big splash. The water is pretty hot but it's not so hot that it isn't refreshing. "Come on the water is amazing!" I yell for them, and Ellie doesn't need much convincing before she jumps off too and laugh when she comes up from the water. "That was so fun!" she says with a big laugh.

"Is it safe mommy?" Kenzie says on the edge looking hesitantly into the water. "You don't have to jump if you don't want to. You can go down the stairs" I tell her as aurora jumps off too.

Joe helps Kenzie down the stairs, so she doesn't trip and hurt herself. "Dad, you need to jump off. Come on don't be a chicken" Ellie tease him and he laughs and after Kenzie is in the water he comes up and take a flip off the edge of the porch and splash water at all of us.