The phenomenal Laura Simms is giving away a scholarship for her deluxe and illuminating Career Homecoming program. Imagine this: six sessions with Laura, personalized support materials, and a source book to get you jiving your way to a career that is a perfect fit for YOU. I mean, it sounds amazing, right? Throw your hat in the ring here - contest ends Wednesday.

In praise of safety.

Loving Susannah Conway’s notes on being a hermit.

Sas Petherick and the wonder women over at Up & Running teamed up for a gorgeous interview this week chock full of beauty, authentic living, and the importance of moving your body.

Why the day that I became selfish was the best thing I ever did (and why you should do it too).

You are a reservoir, not a provider – gorgeousness from Michele Lisenbury Christensen just in time for Mother’s Day.

I am beyond thrilled that Anna Guest-Jelley and Melanie Klein have teamed up to create a book on Body Image + Yoga. HOW EXCITING! Follow them here to be in the know when the book drops.

Smile :: 9 things that rock about being a ladypreneur.

You absolutely need to watch this video.

I am thrilled to introduce today’s interviewee, Vivienne McMaster.

Vivienne is the brilliant heart behind the Be Your Own Beloved e-course, as well as many other tools for utilizing self-portraiture to tap into and dig into your own self-love journey. You can read her story here, and (from the bottom of my heart) I recommend following her on Instagram.

Due to a tech glitch, the gorgeous video interview that we created for you was eaten by my computer. Alas, the show must go on! There are two ways to gobble up this glorious interview. The first is to listen to the audio version, or download it by clicking here.

The second is to peruse the transcription below.

Introduction

Mara:  Hello, everybody!  This is Mara Glatzel, and I am here with the newest installment of the Self-Love Series – an interview series that I run, between myself and Margarita Tartakovsky from Weightless on Psych Central.  And today I am thrilled to be here with Vivienne McMaster!  I am admittedly a huge fangirl of her work, and I just think – really, it’s like a movement, there’s a movement that’s being started, with all of the work that you’re doing around self-portraiture and self-love.  So I’m thrilled, and I’d love to introduce you, or ask you to introduce yourself a little bit.

Vivienne:  Sure!  I am a self-portrait photographer and portrait photographer from Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, and I, through my own personal healing, have discovered that self-portraiture is an amazing tool to cultivate self-love.  So it has kinda become my mission in life.  And something that I’m living daily, as well.  I’m definitely trying to practice what I preach, because self-love is an ongoing process, it’s not something we all of a sudden succeed in.  There’s different levels and depths of having a love affair with ourselves in our lifetimes, so, yeah.  I love sharing how self-portraiture can actually be one of the tools we can use in that.

Mara:  Absolutely.  So, in think about the way that you’re practicing, the way you’re using this self-portraiture – and perhaps any other self-love practices that you have – what does it look like on a regular, everyday for you?

Vivienne:  Well, I often have my camera with me.  So taking self-portraits is part of my daily life practices that I do.  Whether it’s, like, finding a good spot to put – even just putting my iPhone down and turn it on myself, or finding something beautiful to hold in my hand, that’s – I’m always looking for moments where I can practice self-portraiture.  And just like…I feeel like self-portraits are a way of saying, “I’m here, in my life.  This is my story, this is what my day is.”  And for those of us who have any parts of our life where we felt lost or like we didn’t know who we were, or days like that, it just – it feels really grounding, I am here, in this day, this is the story.  So that’s one of my biggest self-love everyday tools.  I also have – it’s more in my week; I started something recently that I call my “self-care policies”, because as I’m writing things I’m like “Wow, I can make company policies for my business of one!”  And I don’t think we need to run a business to do that.

These are my self-care policies in my week.  So, today’s Monday, and one of my policies is to have some computer-free – okay, I might have my iPhone there to take a picture of it – but to have some computer-free time, like at a coffee shop, with just my journal and a pen.  Just to have, like, I might write goals for the week, or just spill out whatever I need to spill.  So, journaling, writing, with pen to paper, has felt like a big self-care space.  Just creating little pockets of space for myself, where whatever needs to happen in terms of self-care and self-love in that moment.  Sometimes I’ll be crying in the cafe, like getting stuff out.  [laughs]  It’s a very lovely place I go to, for that, where that’s okay.

My other self-care policy is hiking once a week.  I do live in a rainy city, so it doesn’t always happen, but I try to just get out into the woods, with a friend or alone, and just get out to nature really and move.  And that’s one of my other big self-love things.  Because, you know, self-love in the inner way is nurturing and nourishing myself, but I also just want to feel really alive.  You know, those moments that make me feel like “Oh, I’m here in this day!”  That feels like self-care, like that I deserve this, that I can just have sunshine down on me, whatever I’m doing, just feeling alive feels like self-love to me.  So those are some of my everyday or every-couple-days big tools.  And baths!  [laughs]

Mara:  Absolutely!  And you know what, I love that, I love how you sort of describe the self-portraiture as saying “I am here.”  And largely due to your fantastic influence, I’ve started taking pictures of myself throughout my day, and after a lifetime and so much more of being camera-shy, and doing a whole lot of self-love stuff but still resisting the camera, I found that it really…it does ground you in your day in a certain way.  It is such an interesting way to capture yourself and pay attention to yourself and your self-love.  I think that you do that so fantastically well.  I’m curious – and I typically ask about books or things that you’re interacting with or videos that you think are absolutely must-reads for self-love or body knowledge.

But since you are a visual artist, I’m wondering what inspires you in that way.  What have you taken in lately that you feel is a must-read or a must-see in terms of your own self-love process?

Vivienne:  Well, I do have a book right here that’s one of my –

Mara:  Oh!

Vivienne:  Yes, yes!  [laughs]

Mara:  So good.

Vivienne:  Beautiful You, by Rosie Molinary.  So good.  That’s the book of right now, that is lighting me up.  I keep thinking, “Thank goodness this is here!”  One of the other online things right now that just – I could watch it again and again – is Anna Guest-Jelley of Curvy Yoga.  She did a video recently about, can you love yourself in the moment and want to lose weight?  And I was like, “How in the world is she gonna answer that?”  And she did the most beautiful video, and I’m kind of obsessed with it.  That’s – yeah.  And I won’t give it away, because I think everybody should go see it, but just really trusting yourself, right?

Mara:  Absolutely.  And I love that video so much too.  I have that feeling of, “[gasps] Oh!  Oh my goodness.”  That’s a big question.  That’s a big, big question.  I love those, too.  And we have interviewed both of those people in this lovely self-love series, so I’ll leave the link below so everyone can check them out, because I think both of them are just really great resources and I just love those two.

So, in terms of other ways that you kind of get into your body and practice self-care, do you have any favorite ways to move your body other than hiking?

Or is hiking really your main thing?

Vivienne:  Hiking is a new thing for me.  I like to talk about rewriting stories, and I had this story that, I don’t have a car, and I live in a big city, and you need a car to go hiking.  You don’t.  You need a bus pass.  [laughs]  So hiking is new, but one of my favorite ways to move my body, which came even before self-portraiture, I think it really started my self-love healing big-time, is Nia Dance.

Mara:  Nia!  It’s magical.

Vivienne:  It’s magical.  I’ve gone to the same teacher for, like…oh, a long time.

Mara:  Why don’t you tell people what it is?  Because I feel like most people don’t know anything about Nia.  And they should.

Vivienne:  They should!  It’s a dance technique led by a teacher, that is all about being in your own body and moving in your own way.  There’s yoga influences, martial arts influences, and other different kinds of body-movement influences all brought together.  Your teacher kind of guides you on a routine, but you’re really invited to move in your own way in that process, and it’s poetic, and some days I just feel like a modern dancer, in, you know, a 35-year-old curvy woman’s body, but I feel like a dancer!  It’s amazing.  I take it at the local community center.  It’s not a dance studio in particular.  It’s amazing, and I feel like the more I take it, the more I can go to that place really quickly, where I just trust my body.  And there’s a fair amount of free dancing in it.  At first I was like “uh-uh!” [laughs]  That sounds like when you ask people to take a self-portrait.  “No, it’s just not gonna work, that’s scary.”  But the free-dancing part is what I’m really in love with, where you can be awkward, you can just dance and move and shake and just really trust that your body is going to move in the way that it needs to.  It’s amazing.

Mara:  And it seems so much, too, again, that reflection of claiming your own space.  Being in your own space, and…the last Nia class I was at, there was a fair amount of like, stomping, and really owning your spot in the room.  It felt so affirming to me, like, yeah, take your space!  This is your space, do whatever you want here.  It’s not very often that we have that kind of experience in our everyday life.

Vivienne:  Uh-uh.

Mara:  And I love that so much.

Vivienne:  You wanna scream sometimes!

Mara:  Yeah!

Vivienne:  Scream, “No!”  How often do you get to do that?

Mara:  Right?  And that’s hard, too, I mean, I think I had less trouble with the free-form dancing than I did with the really yelling, from your belly.  Because you don’t, I think we don’t really take up a lot of space like that.  It releases a lot of pent-up energy, I find, when we’re able to really use our vocal chords in that way

Vivienne:  Totally.

Mara:  So we’re talking about a lot of good things here, that answered this question a little bit, but I’m curious.

If you had like a minute or two minutes of somebody’s time, what do you wish that women really knew about loving and appreciating themselves?

Vivienne:  Well, coming from a photography place, I really wish that women knew that their camera could be their friend, not their enemy.  Or other people’s cameras.  And mirrors, too.  That their self-reflection, whether it’s in a photo, or in a mirror – those places where we are most triggered by the opposite of self-love, are the places where we have the most potential to do our work.  Yeah.  The course that I’m teaching now is called Be Your Own Beloved.  I just want women to start being their own beloved, and to treat themselves the way and see themselves the way other people see them.  Because we all put such kindness to other people, admiration, appreciation, but we don’t turn it on ourselves.  So, your camera can be your friend!

Mara:  So I’m curious, if there was someone listening to this who was like “Oh hell no, that’s not even possible,” what is the first thing you would tell somebody, or like the first way you would get somebody to just start experimenting with it?

Vivienne:  Well, one of the ways that I started, and is the way that I would probably recommend they did, is to just go out and search out beauty in the world.  Not necessarily themselves!  But like, go in search of something that they find beautiful, and add themselves to the photo in some way.  Whether it’s your toes, or your hands, that’s a self-portrait.  And I find that searching for beauty outwardly, it eventually comes back inwardly.  Searching for beauty in the world around you gets reflected, and eventually you just see the beauty within you.  And you don’t have to see it in the first photo.  Nor do you have to take full-body photos the first time.  So just, inserting yourself, that you are here in this moment with this bit of beauty that you found in the world, would be a great place to start making friends with your camera and yourself.

Mara:  I love that.  Well, I will definitely be partaking in the May class of Be Your Own Beloved, so I would encourage anybody else who’s listening to this to get on board as well, because it is guaranteed to be fantastic.  It’s funny, I was talking to a friend of mine about how I had to take this class and it was changing everything, and she said to me something to the effect of, “Watching you learn how to take pictures of yourself is sort of like watching a baby find its feet, it’s like you just didn’t know that cameras existed before this day of your life!”  And at first I was like, you know, offended.  [laughs]  But then I was like, it is kind of like a baby finding their feet.

Vivienne:  Yeah.

Mara:  You know, after an entire lifetime of not allowing myself to be photographed at all, even the opportunity to take a picture of your toe, or your hand, or something, and to just decide that it’s beautiful really does begin to slowly shift your perception of yourself.  Which is so wonderful.

So, I’m curious – who are your heroes in this world?  Who do you just admire and get your inspiration from?

Vivienne:  This question…the first thing that comes to mind is actually – this may sound like it doesn’t make sense, but it’ll make sense.  Fat fashion bloggers are my heroes.  Those folks who are walking the world every day, and these are just an example of people who are outwardly sharing that they, that we all deserve to feel fabulous and like our outward expression reflects ourself and we deserve to walk in the world feeling empowered and beautiful.  And so my heroes are the people who are doing that, like “I deserve this, every day.”  And fashion is a way, it’s a good way to claim it, to be empowered in how you go out in the world.

But yeah, my heroes are the lady at the bus stop who I can just see feels good in her body today.  Or the people who work hard to do that every day and share that online.  Those are my everyday heroes.  And I think Anna Guest-Jelley is becoming one of my heroes too, with that video.  [laughs]  Just people who are spreading the message of self-love, I think.  Whether it’s just to the person walking beside them on the sidewalk, or the internet.  And I have other – Oprah, or like, bigger heroes –

Mara:  You were on Oprah.com, like, what, this week?  Last week?  Oh my gosh.

Vivienne:  [laughs]  It’s so funny!  Yeah, that was pretty neat.  It was a photo of my feet, and this message, like a block from my house written in the sidewalk, “love yourself”.  So it was like, [gasps].  If ever there was a photo that is my message, it’s a self-portrait with “love yourself”.  So that was pretty neat, to have Oprah’s face and my feet on the same page!

Mara:  Yeah!

Vivienne:  But it’s about going out in the world and taking, you know, those little moments.

Mara:  So when we think about these kinds of heroes, these people who are going out and showing up and dressing up and really owning their bodies, I’m wondering – is that something that has been a struggle for you in the past?  Like, does that – because often, our heroes come out of this place where we are like, “That’s what I want, I want to chase after that feeling.”

So I’m curious if that, or you know, anything else, those are the obstacles that you have in your own journey of self-love.

Vivienne:  Hmm.  That’s a big, powerful question.  I think my biggest obstacle is myself, like, the ways where I just don’t let myself, right?  Or where I get caught up in negative self-talk, or…yeah.  If it’s okay, I’ll share a bit of my story.

Mara:  Please do!

Vivienne:  My teen years…this story’s a bit hard to tell, because it’s about family, and family is beautiful and wonderful and you don’t want to, like, spill your beans on the internet.  But I feel like it’s becoming more and more important for me to share why I’m so obsessed with self-love.  One of my siblings has a condition called misophonia, which is a neurological disorder, and it is essentially a hatred of sound.  Their hearing is so heightened – you know how people are irritated by like scratching on a chalkboard.  But if you have this condition, it’s extreme.  Little sounds, like me moving my hands here, or chewing, are just, they make you not able to cope, and get angry and stressed.  And so my sibling had this condition, and it’s common that your family members are the ones who are most triggering for you.

Enter little Viv.  So my teenage years were very much flavored by this and the experience of trying to find my pre-teen, teenage sense of self had this extra thing where the way I swallowed, the way I breathed, the way I walked, the way I moved my hands were irritating and were told, “you need to stop that!”  So I felt, by the time I finished the teen years I felt really disembodied, in a way, like not – I didn’t feel present in my own body, and I believed that I was unloveable, disgusting, and irritating.  So that’s where it all began, for me, was healing from that over the years.  So movement, in a big way, that’s why I love Nia dance so much, to feel back in my body again.

So, while either way I could say that that experience was my obstacle, it’s also been a blessing and the way that I’ve had to focus so much on self-love and self-care and healing, and so still I think, I don’t think of it as my obstacle.  I think that me believing it, and carrying it on for so many years that that was the truth, was – and it comes up still, in a daily experience where I just have to remember, “No, no, I breathe okay, I swallow okay, I walk okay, I’m okay.”  And not only that, but I get to control it all.  I felt so out of control for much of my life, and now I’m finding my way back to just trusting that I’m beautiful and loveable and worthy.  Lots of us have different stories that brought us to that place where we didn’t believe it in ourselves.  So, yeah.  That’s my story!

Mara:  And you know, something that I so much love in doing this series and talking to people who do work with self-love, is that so often, it’s like two sides of the same coin.  The things that were the hardest and the things that have also become your greatest source of light, and your ability to teach and heal yourself and others.  And I think that that is really powerful for people who are in that dark place still, or are really afraid of that dark place within themselves.  And having examples of people like yourself, who have felt that way and have really used that as this enormously powerful source for helping others and healing yourself and going through that entire process.

Vivienne:  Mhmm.  But it’s hard to think of it that way, when you’re in it, because you’re really like…your curse can become a blessing.

Mara:  Absolutely.  I could not agree more.  It’s very hard to hold onto, and I think that’s why it’s so important that people keep sharing those parts of their story, because I think that it’s all too easy for somebody to go to your gorgeous website and see your beautiful pictures that you take of yourself and say “This person loves themselves.  They probably always, they grew up loving themselves.”  Because of course that’s the story that we tell.

Vivienne:  Yeah.  That everybody else has it.

Mara:  Right, absolutely.  So thank you so much for sharing that part of your story with us.  Is there anything else, any last message or words of wisdom you’d like to leave our readers with?

Vivienne:  Pick up your camera!  [laughs]  Say, “I am here.”  I think that would be, I hope people would feel inspired today, to just get playful with your camera, even just your iPhone, to find some moments where they can claim space and look for some beauty in your day.

Mara:  I love that.  And you recently had a post up that was around camera gear, and apps that you use for your iPhone, stuff like that.  So I’m gonna link to that below, just as another resource for people who are like, “I want to pick up my camera but I don’t even know how my camera works.”  So I’ll link to that.

Vivienne:  And I ended the post saying, there’s this quote, I don’t remember who it’s by, but, “The best camera is the one you have with you.”  So don’t get caught up in that you need fancy gear to do it, too.  [laughs]

Mara:  Absolutely, I love that.  Well, thank you so much, this has been absolutely fantastic, and I hope that everyone runs to check you out, because I think what you’re doing is just so inspirational.  And needed, really needed in this world.  So, thank you!

Vivienne:  My pleasure!

Mara:  Bye!

Vivienne:  Bye!

Required reading: A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl (About Her Future Husband). Though, I would say, the sentiment here could easily extend way beyond these gender/sexuality norms. 

Guess what I did yesterday? I had a photo shoot with the AMAZING Kylie Bellard to revamp the vibe around here. I can’t wait to show you what we got up to. In the meantime, I really recommend you check out this post on why it’s not selfish to make art that’s just for yourself.

Relationship rules for the single seeker.

Your Self-Love Adjustment – the podcast that I run with the fabulous Christie Inge – is up on iTunes! This month jammed about food and guilt, and it was a hugely important conversation. Skip on over and give it a listen! Also, a humble favor, if you just love this podcast, I would be really grateful it if you’d write us a wee testimonial. Thank you in advance. xo

This is me, looking into my own eyes with kindness.

April’s Self-Love Series interviewee was the phenomenal Alex Franzen, and her wise words are breath-taking.

A 2-Step Plan to a (Much) Better Business. P.s. I totally use the Pomodoro technique as well and it’s a life-changer. 

Joy doesn’t “happen to you” – it’s cultivated.

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

{Leonard Cohen}

Over the course of my life, I have been very fond of saying that my time to shine is the exact moment when the cracks start to show and things begin to unravel.

I have a penchant for the exact second when things shift from pretty to vulnerable, when we allow ourselves to be truly witnessed by others. For some of us, this happens only rarely, in glimpses and moments of exhaustion. For others, it is the continual practice of becoming, unwinding, and unfurling.

And, yet, my own personal relationship with vulnerability has always been a cautious one. Carefully constructed. Unravelling, but still pulled together. Comfortable in my emotional risk taking.

Lately, in gathering with circles of women, I’ve begun noticing two things happening simultaneously.

This is my prayer for the uneasy tension that so many of us feel when we tell yourselves that we have to hold it all together.

Reinforcing our worn-through parts

We all have parts of our lives that wear thin, like the elbow of your favorite sweater or the knees of the jeans that you wear to garden. Those parts of our lives are thinned by the constancy of use and movement. It is the place where our guard has been relaxed and we’ve been battered down.

Psychically, these are the places that are familiar territory for us, but where we are desperate for a resolution.

Gathering with women is a balm for the parts of our spirit that feels worn through.

That, in allowing ourselves to be witnessed, fully and completely, we are able to reinforce those worn-through parts.

When I was five, my grandmother taught me how to knit, and I remember marveling at how her needles clicked together as she translated pattern to sweater. When I imagine repairing my worn-through parts, I summon the expertise of my matrilineal knowledge, calling upon her swiftly clicking needles to heal the parts of my spirit that is calling for reinforcement.

We seek to repair ourselves in many ways, some healthy and some less healthy. We cocoon ourselves up, hiding ourselves away from the world. We protect. We become bright, sharp-edged things and we bang around – knocking over everything in our path.

I want this to be a space where we can show up, and heal ourselves through our communal desire for wholeness, for maintaining our structural integrity, even as we grow and change.

This is a place where we can gather, reinforcing our worn-through parts and inviting all of ourselves to the table.

A place that evokes the intention of coming as you are.

This place is yours as much as it is mine.

Letting our light shine through the cracks

Even as we work to heal ourselves, to summon up the strength of those clicking needles to reinforce our worn-through parts, we must hold this to be true: we are beautiful in our vulnerabilities, and there is power in the light that shines through the cracks. 

You do not need to have it all together.

In fact, you do not need to have any of it together.

When I imagine the cracks in my life, I focus on two images. The first is a chick cracking out of an egg into the early morning light. It is exhausting, big work to crack out of that egg, but I would imagine, as the light begins to stream through the crevices, the job becomes less like grudge work. Instead, the task becomes the beautiful act of greeting the day and basking in the light.

The second image, is of a can with intricately designed holes poked in it. From the outside it looks simple, but when the lights are turned out and the candle is lit, light flows through all of those holes, casting designs on the walls around it.

As we grow, as the cracks begin to present themselves and we begin the work of showing up and owning our growth, let us be the chick and the candle. Let us summon up all of our strength and allow glimpses of our light to be seen.

We will survive the shining of our light, the emerging of our spirit.

We will survive the mending of our worn-through bits.

We will embrace the full depth of our lineage. We will call upon our angels. We will open ourselves up to everyday magic.

We will survive the sting of rejection and the pain of being misunderstood.

We will tend to our inner light, our wild and unruly and beautiful spirit. Tending to that light is our only job.

We will survive, even if we have failed many times before.

And with time, and with unhindered gentleness, we will become. 

{image credit}

Fascinating: Dove, Nike and the Perils of Positive Advertising.

Oh, so you have body image issues? This cartoon is just so unbelievably wonderful.

Why Charging What You’re Worth is Bullshit.

This week the lovely Rachel Cole invited me over to her place to jam about my understanding of what it means to live a Well Fed Life. Skip on over to hear all about it (and witness a side of the story that I’ve never told online before).

I am beautiful.

If you’re on the hunt for shoes that are stylish and great for walking all over town, Vivienne has some great suggestions up this week. Also! Be Your Own Beloved starts next week! ZOMG, I am so excited. Join us, pretty please, and begin falling madly in love with yourself. Check it out here.

Pumpkin pie energy bars. Yes. Please.

The Self-Love Series returns! This month Margarita and I are interviewing the FABULOUS Alexandra Franzen, and it is absolutely worth a read.

5 Ways to Find Your True Desire. Yep. Second Kate Courageous post in the round-up. What can I say? She is rocking it. 

As in, oh honey, you’ve had such a bad day, that cupcake will totally make you feel better.

And, you’ve worked so hard, skip your workout, you’ve earned the right to have a Netflix marathon. 

Or, don’t go out and spend time with your friends, it all sounds so exhausting, just hop on the couch.

Yep.

And after having lived much of my life under the tyrannical rule of my inner critic, I really believed that this was taking care of myself. Because, I was being nice, right? I was talking to myself gently! I wasn’t pushing too hard.  This was the second layer. 

However, I have never felt better after eating the cupcake or skipping the work out or hiding away when I’ve been upset.

It’s not that any of these things are bad, it’s just that for me, they are not the solution.

And that each and every one of us has an individual body and individual process that we must unearth, so that we can begin to take spectacular care of ourselves.

But here is the (very important) thing: taking care of yourself – real care, the kind that heals you – is not a punishment. 

You have not done something wrong.

It is not because you are in such disrepair that you’ve been burdened with the task of learning to care for yourself.

You haven’t been “bad.”

This isn’t your fresh start.

Taking care of yourself is the foundation of healing your relationship with your body. 

Taking care of your body may in fact look like any of the options listed above. It may look like a Netflix marathon or a cupcake, but it is also going to look a lot like getting out in the sunshine, moving your limbs, eating your greens, drinking enough water, and getting adequate sleep.

It will be imperfect, but we cannot allow our fears of imperfection relegate caring for our bodies to the backburner.

Taking care of your body is a process. It requires that you pay close attention to yourself, taking copious notes and experimenting as you go.

It requires that we pay attention to how our bodies feel instead of how it is or isn’t pleasing us by it’s appearance. 

Our bodies are beautifully resilient. They move us about in the world, operating as well as they possibly can, even when we don’t give them a second thought. They show up, even when we ignore them. They support us, even when when their support is indicative of an  unrequited love affair.

They work, even when we are too consumed by how they appear to others or the number on a scale or the size on the label to notice. 

If we are set to the task of developing a loving and trusting relationship with ourselves, we must first turn our attention to meeting the daily physical needs of our bodies. We must look past the number on the scale, to see our bodies as they truly are – a collection of skin, bones, and organs. A gorgeous system of moving gears that we can support and nourish with our daily actions.

Too often, we ignore our bodies because we are angry with them. 

We believe that they have betrayed us by growing in size, or being resistent to our constant plans for renovation.

Over time, we separate our heads from the rest of our selves, and, intellectually, we leave our bodies behind.

We ignore the signals that indicate our needs.

We silence the voice of our inner wisdom.

We get angry when our body further betrays us by getting sick or tired, when our bodies won’t DO what we want them to do. 

Within this interwoven web of our daily lives – our bodies play a huge role, but too often they receive the smallest amount of attention.

Taking care of our physical selves is not a punishment, it is the foundation of how we commune with lives. It is how we heal ourselves – how we tend to our weak parts. 

It is how we support ourselves as we move about our day.

It is the love that we show ourselves, even when we feel deeply unlovable.

With time, as we prioritize caring for ourselves, we are able to see that we are worth caring for.

This is the first step in the reunification process – beautifully reconnecting the pieces that have been disjointed.

You may struggle to look at your body in the mirror.

You might be mad at your body when you pull on a pair of jeans in the department store.

You may be thinking angry, violent thoughts about your body.

Wherever you are today, no matter what your relationship with your body has been up until this point – it is time for the white flag of surrender. You can no longer afford to ignore your body because you are upset. This is the moment.

Wherever it is that you are trying to go, you will not get there through punishment or cruelty.

It is only through love – love for yourself and love for your body – that you will find your path.

Today, carve out the space to care for your body.  Spend time thinking about what that might entail, and how you can weave it into your schedule so as to support yourself more tenderly.

Your body is worth your greatest care and attention. 

As it cares for you. Every day.

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Don’t beg for business. Command it.

This just about blew my mind.. Inspiration is for Amateurs.

5 Ways to Practice Self-Love When Planning Your Wedding. Oh yes.

We amplify our joy when we share it with others.

This has been a hard week for the world, Kyla Roma writes. Her advice? Be soft.

Raw Choc Caramel Bites. Yep.

Jenn Gibson has gone solo over on Roots of She, and I adored her post on talking with your fear this week.

Big, big love for Nona Jordan’s post this week, Free Your Essence of Awesome.

This smashed raspberry lemonade cocktail has my name all over it.

Yes. Immediately.

And then, but why the hell has it been so hard?

A knot formed in my stomach, and my heart felt full when I thought about the relationship that I’ve had with change for the duration of my life.

Change is uncertain. Yes, of course that is true.

Change means I have no control. Did I have control to begin with?

Change means I don’t know if you will love me anymore. Ouch. 

Change means shedding the stability and routine of knowing exactly how things are. Terrifying. 

I often joke with my wife that I am a completely different person by lunchtime than I was when I woke up in the morning. In my heart, I know that the velocity of my shedding and evolving in the last year of my life has been both necessary and frightening, particularly for a reform(ing) control freak like myself.

It’s been a roller coaster. And I’m still learning how to throw my hands up in the air and scream with the best of them.

Laughing, we both talk about how all of us are changing all the time. And, yet, I feel my fear around the periphery. I know that I am making a joke at my own expense, and beneath the joke are the expansive questions – Will you still love me? What if I change so much I am no longer recognizable? What if you can’t find me? What if we can’t change together?

And yet, I must continue on this path. 

Yesterday I was working with a client who said, I just don’t WANT to change. It ISN’T FUN. I know that’s fucked up, but there’s a huge part of me that just wants to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I smiled. Yes, sometimes it is decidedly not fun. And, yet, it is rewarding without exception.

We are creatures of comfort. We will always prefer the life we know to the life that we don’t, even when we can unequivocally agree that the life we know is much to small or no longer serves us. But, for some of us, we hit a point where we simply cannot live in that too-small-life any longer.

The back-story

I grew up shutting up and shutting down.

I grew up tampering my bright light, because the message was we won’t love you anymore if you shine too brightly. 

I grew up in the midst of a family in motion, and the only way I knew how to survive was to create my own stability – in my body, in my life. My body became my home. I packed on layers and layers to take up space so that my spirit could move around deep somewhere beneath it all. Like a tent wrapped in comforters, deep within my spirt was a happy little wild girl tending to a fire. Down deep, she was safe and merry. She pranced around, made up songs, drew on the walls, stomped her feet, wrote stories, and took care of herself the best way that she knew how.

Hidden, she was protected. But she grew restless. 

On the surface, my life was tame. I relaxed into the comfort of doing what I know I can do very well, and swallowing the parts of my day-to-day that, honestly, were of no interest to me. I did exactly what I thought that I should do, the information compiled from years of closely examining what actions elicited the highest rate of validation and affirmation. 

On the inside, I ate my boredom. I ate to shut my spirit up when she inquired, isn’t there so much more for us? Can I come out now? 

Like any child that has been protected and nurtured and loved, my spirit grew assertive and powerful.

Radical Self-Responsibility

The thing about truly living your life is that you have to be willing to get a little messy. It will not always be beautiful or predictable, but it will be all yours. Sitting with your struggle will not overwhelm you completely – you will survive it.

In thinking about change, it is very painful for me to sit with the wondering about what the future holds, and who will be there with me at I dig into my life – more firmly and lovingly embodying it everyday. It is painful, because, habitually, I want a sure thing.

I want to know that this ring on my finger means that you married me, and that you will always be married to me.

I want to know that my body will reach one weight, and I will be that weight forever and never change.

I want to move into a house that I will spend the rest of my life in.

I want to let all of these things, this delicious stability, tell me that I am worthy and good.

For me, wanting these things is a part of my old script. That script directs me not to upset the careful balance of things, not to talk to loud, or  express myself fully.

My old script wants me to test the crowd, carefully noting other people’s energy fields, and determining ahead of time how I can tailor my presence so as to be received well. 

That has come at a huge cost for me. I am worthy and good, already.

For much of my life, I have been pleasing everyone else, but I have been alienating myself.

My spirit has been ripping down the comforters and setting fire to her tent and dancing in the light of day - and I am better for it. 

I am willing to get messy.

I am willing to not know how it is going to turn out.

I am willing to take steps forward anyway.

I am willing to write my own ending.

That, is radical self-responsibility. I take myself with me wherever I go. I am dedicated to fully embodying my life and my skin. I am dedicated to shining, even when it’s uncomfortable. I am dedicated to staying with myself, no matter what, all the time, without exception.

Are you?

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I was very honored to be interviewed about my creative process on Psych Central this week.

I am a rosemary lemonade superfan. Psst :: add a little gin + prosecco and you’ve got a gorgeous spring + summer cocktail.

Confessions of a thin-privileged fat activist.

Rachel Cole is featuring a gorgeous collection of well-fed stories on her blog right now, and I particularly loved this one by Kate Swoboda.

I’ve grown weary of the cult of low body fat. Amen.

Seriously loving Thug Kitchen this week. Also, Sandmaiden Sleepwear - most gorgeous, handmade organic cotton pajamas.

Green juice for beginners.

Mmm… Positive Procrastination: Getting Stuff Done Intuitively.

I am going to remind you lots this month, but I am all signed up (and SUPER EXCITED) for Vivienne McMaster’s may class of Be Your Own Beloved. I really recommend it, and would love to have you join in on the self-portraiture fun with me!

Also in defense of authentic social media-ing.

Alternate title: The Antidote for Envying Others is Learning to Love What You Already Have. 

The other day I was talking to my wife about photography, something that I have recently taken a bit of an interest in. I like to be comfortably late to every party, so I just discovered Instagram. Yep, I do what I can. My wife, who has taken gorgeous photos for many years, said to me, “It’s so cute watching you with your camera, it’s like watching a baby find it’s feet.”

Ahem.

At first I was vaguely insulted, but then I realized: yeah, it’s exactly like that. 

Except, not my feet. It’s like watching this baby find her life.

My Instagram feed isn’t a treasure trove of comparison and images conjured up to make me feel like my own life is lackluster in comparison, though I do certainly understand the feeling. It is a carefully curated collection of feminine beauty and power – something that I find immensely inspirational.

Before I started loving my life, as it is and myself right along with it, I used to spend every single day comparing myself to everyone around me. 

Oh that girl has such a perfect sun dappled couch and she’s sitting there with her artisanal cup of coffee, not a CARE in the world. Her life must be perfect. 

Oh man, look at that, ALL THE COOL COACHES are hanging out together AGAIN. Why doesn’t anyone ever go on sunset walks and take shadow pictures with ME?!  

If only my offerings were ______, then I would be _______, and everything would be perfect. I wouldn’t even have to work – all I would have to do is show up and money would rain at my feet. 

She has such nicer ______ than me – I wonder what she’s doing? Maybe that would work for me?

Perfect wedding. Perfect children. Perfect hair. Damn her. 

Lies. Beautifully cultivated lies – constructed mostly in the context of my own head, playing to my particular set of insecurities.

You have a choice with social media, like you do with just about everything. You choose to use it in a way that lifts you up, or in a way that breaks you down. Do you want to spend your everyday comparing yourself to everyone around you? How does that make you feel, honestly?

This week, Shauna Niequist wrote a post entitled Instagram’s Envy Effect, in which she stated, “Let’s choose community. Let’s stop comparing. Let’s start connecting,” and I couldn’t agree more. But, I don’t think that this community needs to be built at the expense of depicting the beautiful in our everyday lives. 

I also suspect that it depends on your definition of beauty.

I love real things. Rough edges. Circles beneath eyes. Shadows. I crave powerful images – the kind that tell a story about your life.

I actively seek to add as many of those Instagrammers to my feed as possible. The ones with the gorgeous coffee, beautiful shoes next to inspirational sayings written on concrete, or beautiful faces that they take ten pictures of a day. I actively try to surround myself with as much beauty as possible, and I let it remind me that there is beauty in my everyday. My cup of coffee. My dog. My house. My face. 

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be easy. It can be joy-filled.

This isn’t about narcissism. This is about self-love. It is about finding the everyday magic.

When you start falling in love with what you have, you can stop judging yourself for what you don’t.

This isn’t about waiting until everything is perfect to take a photo, or pay attention to yourself, to your life. This is about finding your beauty in every moment – no matter how tear-filled or heart-breaking.

It is not about how many little hearts a photo gets, or whether or not twenty people tell me that I’m pretty.

It is about me, showing up as myself, and doing it proudly. Often.

It is about me, standing in my own power, and claiming my place in my life, after a life of shrinking or hunching my shoulders or hiding out.

Because this baby is not just finding her life, she is cultivating the most beautiful life she can possibly manage for herself.

And, hey, you don’t have to share every photo that you take, or every moment that you document. It doesn’t become beautiful just because someone else says that it is. It is beautiful because it is your understanding of your life – your photo, your moment, your document.

This is about your relationship with yourself. 

If you want to learn how to use self-portraiture as way to learn how to love yourself, I highly recommend Vivienne McMaster’s class Be Your Own Beloved. Registration is open now for May’s class – I’ll see you there. 

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