by Antoinette

The Mandel Public Library is excited to celebrate not just “every body,” but the third year of Perfectly Imperfect! Over the last three years we have had guest speakers, workshops, and authors come to the library to educate and promote the self-love, body confidence, and healthy wellness messages that benefit everyone from 16 to 100.

This year we are happy to announce we have expanded our Perfectly Imperfect offerings with five programs that help support the idea of loving yourself in the skin you are in and rewiring your brain to not believing in old habits and toxic messages. Each program is meant to help elevate your life, knowing that what works for you may not work for someone else, and give you the ability to find personal empowerment over food and body expectations.

Join us Saturday, March 4 at 1:30 PM for an author talk and book signing with Marc and Angel Chernoff, and later in the month for lectures and workshops hosted by the FAU staff including "Glowing Up: Developing an Action Plan for Body Positivity," "Moving Beyond the Clean Plate Club," and "EmBODY Love: A Visual Representation of Self-Love." Rachel Smith a licensed marriage and family therapist will discuss "How to Love the Skin You’re in" on Saturday, March 18 at 1:30 PM.

For more information about our amazing Perfectly Imperfect programs, visit our online calendar.

This year we are also recommending the book Befriending Your Body: A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing Yourself from Disordered Eating by Ann Saffi Biasetti. Befriending Your Body offers yoga-based movement, body-awareness practices, meditations, and journaling exercises to help release long-held habits of self-criticism and perfection. Biasetti’s step-by-step program will rebuild self-compassion, self-care, body awareness and acceptance, and connection to self and others. Find it in the library or on cloudLibrary.

Can’t attend the programs in-person or just want some more information? Not only do we have wonderful books to check out in the Mind, Body, Spirit and Health and Wellness sections on the first floor of the library, but we have some great e-resources as well including past Perfectly Imperfect recommendations on cloudLibrary and wellness recommendations from Hoopla featuring yoga, body confidence, self-care, meditation, self-love, and more!