Meet Mackenzie Morrow, a Confident Woman campaign participant
“The CONFIDENT WOMAN campaign” is a photography project aimed to boost confidence through self-acceptance and self-love, to create a platform to inspire and support women in achieving the life they want. It is limited to 25 participants. Reserve your spot now:
Today I would like to introduce Mackenzie Morrow. Mackenzie is a singer and a song writer as well as a body confidence coach at Mackenzie Muscle, LLC. In our interview she talks a lot about inner strength and confidence as this is what she promotes through her work and her art. Mackenzie has made a journey from car accident injury towards creating her online fitness coaching program; she quit emotionally abusive partner and built a healthy relationship. She has so much to share! Read our conversation below.
For our photoshoot she wanted to create few images inspired by Stevie Nicks style.
About Mackenzie Muscle, LLC: https://www.4mycard.net/u/jtxx/Mackenzie-Morrow
Could you please introduce yourself?
I'm Mackenzie Morrow and I'm the CEO of Mackenzie Muscle, LLC. I'm an online body confidence coach focused on helping women unleash their inner body confidence, focusing on changing that from the inside out. I'm also a singer, songwriter and pop artist, and I'm releasing my first album in about a month.
What motivated you to participate in a Confident Woman campaign?
I saw some of your photos and they're really amazing. I actually had a client of mine participate in the Confident Woman campaign, and she came back to me and she's still raving over her photos from, like, a couple of months ago and just talked a lot about how Oxana has gone the extra mile and just how professional she is and how much she loves her photos. She told me that's the most confident and the best she's ever felt about any photos she's ever taken. So Oxana obviously doing amazing work and making women feel good about themselves.
Can you tell me what is a Confident Woman for you?
A confident woman is someone who stays true to who she is, stands up for what she believes in, and knows her worth. There are many times in my life where maybe I found my worth in things that weren't necessarily the right thing. Like, it used to be grades for me. I was a straight A student, so that was kind of where my confidence was. And I went through middle school and that awkward period. And I think that really built character for me because you kind of have to learn to navigate things differently and realize that you worth so much. No matter how your body changes or what you look like, we're all beautiful and made in God's image and just learning to embrace that. And I think so often it's easy for us to say, oh, well, my hair is brown, I wish I had blonde hair. I'm curvy. I wish I was thin. I'm thin. I wish I was curvy. But instead of looking at what we don't have, like, really just embracing who God made us and the things that we do have, because there's a lot of time wasted wishing that we were someone else. So I think it's really just embracing who you are and trying to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
I can't agree more. I always say that self acceptance is the first step towards true happiness, because without self accepting yourself, you can't find anything you like or anything you want in life.
Yeah, true. I actually just released a song about self acceptance about a month ago called Black Butterfly. It's basically about feeling like an outcast but learning to accept yourself anyway.
Can you share a life changing event that helped you to boost your confidence?
I think it's definitely not an overnight thing. I think I did a lot of things that were scary, and I think that helped. Just proving, hey, I can do this. Even if you do it and then you mess up realizing that it's not as big of a deal as you might think it is. I somehow was in the Miss South Carolina pageant when I was about 16. I got really nervous on stage and probably didn't sound so good because of the nerves. But things like that - getting out of my comfort zone helped make me who I am.
And also I went through an emotionally abusive relationship, and that person was tearing me down all the time. And I stood up and I didn't believe the things that he was saying. But after hearing it so many times from somebody who is supposed to love you or whatever, it does kind of get in there a little bit. But one day I just stood up and said, hey, I'm worth more than this. I don't deserve this. I deserve so much better. And I got out of it and I would not trade that or go back for anything. So if you are in that situation, you deserve better. I know it seems so hard and you want that person to change or you want who they used to be to come back, but unfortunate news is they were never that person, and that version is not going to come back. But you can be what you need to be for yourself. And if you find somebody healthy, that's great. I did. But even if I had to be alone for the rest of my life, I would never go back to what I went through. And I promise things are so much better on the other side, and you'll look back and just be like, why did I even deal with that in the first place? So you deserve to be loved and respected by yourself and others.
You're here for a purpose and you mean something, and you're loved, so treat yourself as such.
Would you mind sharing your journey from the car accident injury to creating your online fitness coaching program?
I was always involved in extracurriculars. I got into the fitness industry when I started college, but got in a car accident my first semester. I fractured my pelvis, dislocated hip, fractured collarbone. I had some really great physical and occupational therapists that inspired me. And one of my occupational therapists saw me go from a place of her having to help me take showers to me coming to her boot camp class (she’s also in the fitness industry). I thought it would be really cool to be on the other side of that. So I started teaching group fitness and really enjoy encouraging people. Then I started wanting to do some one-on-one stuff. As I got further into the industry I saw some things that I really didn't like. I didn’t like people being judged on their appearance and the focus on being as small as possible instead of being healthy, which can look different for each person. We've all got different body types, and our healthy might look different than someone else's, and that's totally fine. And so I kind of just wanted to break away from that and make sure that nobody who came to me would experience that type of environment. I wanted to create a truly safe space for women to just be themselves, be vulnerable, because not everybody has that kind of support system. And that's why I teach my clients that if you need to lose weight for health, that's great, you should have that goal. But the confidence thing has got to come from within. If all your marbles are in, “hey, once I reach this weight, I can finally feel good about myself”, even if you reach it, you're not going to feel good about yourself. You have to love yourself first. If you are coming from a place of, “hey, I'm going to punish myself with exercise, I'm going to restrict my food in order to be this size, where I'm going to be worthy and love myself” - it just doesn't work that way. You've got to love yourself first. Move your body because you care for it, and fuel your body with good nutrition because you care for your body. And then that's when the real transformation happens. It's not an outside thing, it's an inside out thing. With my clients we work on mindset. We don't do diets. I have an anti diet method. “Less is more” training method where you're not doing a bunch of cardio, not training six times a week. Being able to flip the script for women and show them, hey, you can actually eat more and get healthier, because 100% of my clients, even the ones that wanted to lose weight, have been eating too little. Busting all the myths from the fitness industry is really satisfying to me. Showing women, hey, you don't have to be in a cage; You don't have to choose whether to be healthy and look good because you can still have aesthetic goals. We just don't want it to be the focus.
What one life wisdom would you like to share?
Never doubt your worth. Like, no matter what anybody says to you, if they say something mean, you're still worthy. It's their problem. You were created for a purpose by the creator of the universe who loves you. And sometimes people are going to be mean and sometimes people aren't going to love you, but that means nothing about you. Just never doubt your worth. If you go through a time period and have an accident like I did, and you're not able to do XYZ, your ability to do things doesn't dictate your worth. How you look doesn't dictate your worth. Your weight doesn't dictate your worth. Who you are on the inside is all that matters. And you just have to exist to be worthy.
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