By Christina Soto | Broadcast Managing Editor
Baylor student Grace Valentine created a blog her freshman year known as the Enough Movement and nearly four years later, she is now a published author.
Through her website, gracevalentine.org the Madison, Fla. senior created The Enough Movement. It is targeted at girls who do not feel enough, whether that is pretty enough, smart enough or thin enough.
“My whole goal for the Enough Movement is to say you aren’t enough for this world. There will be someone who is prettier than you and there will be someone successful than you and you aren’t always going to get your way, but at the end of the day, that’s not what life’s about,” Valentine said.
Valentine’s website has influenced over 6 million views across the globe. She has helped not only the Baylor community, but also girls as far as India and Malaysia.
Caroline Rock, a student at the University of Arkansas, said Valentine’s writing has helped her find her worth.
“I think its such an encouragement to not only me, but to other girls who are sometimes struggling and who don’t feel like they are enough,” Rock said. “Just knowing that the Lord, through him, we are enough.”
In high school, Valentine said she struggled with body image insecurities. She said she was not eating healthy and was exercising daily to burn as many calories as she was consuming.
“As I grew up older, I was like, ‘I have to be pretty. I can’t control my face, I can’t control anything else but I can control my weight,'” Valentine said. “It became a big control thing about how to be a hotter and prettier girl and to be more enough. So I began literally working out every day for like four hours and counting calories to the extreme and it got to the point to where I was even doing things that harmed my body in order to gain advancement in my image.”
Valentine says she hopes her book “Am I Enough?” will serve as a tangible way for women to realize they are not alone. In her book, she discusses 10 lies she thinks women believe. She also speaks truth to those lies by using the Gospel. For example, in one of her chapters titled, “You are beautiful because a guy told you” she shares that your worth should not come from a man’s opinion of you, but through Jesus.
“In those chapters, it will go through my stories and also times when I realized I need the Lord to be my foundation, not some guy’s opinions of me,” Valentine said.
Her book will be on shelves at Barnes & Noble starting July 17 and will be available online on Amazon.com.
