Suddenly I See
This week I decided to get off my ass. I made the choice to start fresh. start new. move forward. I had been paralyzed for some time, dealing with the grieving that comes with an ending to something you thought would last forever~ a marriage.
When you're in a marriage, you have your ideas about what is "supposed to be" ingrained in your mind, soul, and heart. Your future, while always uncertain, contains a security based on the idealism of forever. Clearly, my soul and heart needed the time and space that this paralysis offered to catch up to my head and to reality. To filter out what "could have been" and what was "supposed to be" with what "is". I was overwhelmed with a life ahead of me that was now open to ANYTHING. ....ANYTHING I wanted...which was EVERYTHING...and EVERYTHING paralyzed me into NOTHING. and that's where I got caught up in....doing NOTHING.
In conjunction with my week of starting new, I happened across a TREASURE at the bookstore that LEAPED and TWIRLED right into my soul. It's called Inner Excavation by one of my favorite bloggers, Liz Lamoreux. (I found her blog via one of my favorite photographers, Vivienne McMaster whose work is also included in this book). The book is all about expression...about finding and exploring your "self" using creativity such as photography, poetry, words, and mixed media...which just so happen to be all of my very favorite things...my passions!
So I woke up on Monday, put my big girl pants on, got out into the world, dropped off applications, faxed important documents, and tackled financial lists. I was on fire! I did all these things keeping in mind that I was going to reward myself with an "Inner Excavation" self portrait photo shoot. I was going to capture me with the fresh eyes of a new day and all the possibilities before me.
What did I see when I looked at me? I saw the beauty of a regular girl. A woman who is not perfect, but who knows what works for her....what angles, what poses, what thoughts and visions that can capture her true self in a moment, a woman who knows who she was, who she is, and who she wants to become.
Isn't it true? We DO know what works for us. We do know deep inside in our heart and gut what is right for us...what makes our soul sing ...what makes us leap and twirl. Yet, we ignore our longings and yearnings by getting caught up in codependent tendencies. We put others first, or we waste our time thinking about and judging their behavior and actions so that we don't have to LOOK at ourselves and focus on what would make us truly happy. We ignore the deepest part of ourselves...the part that radiates our true beauty because we are probably paralyzed with fear.
One of my favorite songs is Suddenly I see by KT Tunstall. Listen to the video and use the words in her song as inspiration. Then go out and give yourself the gift of a self portrait photo shoot. Look at yourself. Your face is a map of the world. You're a beautiful girl. Give yourself the power to be. The power to give. The power to see. We need to know that who we are inside is exactly who we should be on the outside. BEING involves BECOMING.