.png)
Taken in my In-Person Be Your Own Beloved Workshop at the Soul Sisters Conference
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of community & self-portraiture. Especially since part of the criticism of ‘selfies’ is that people share them on social media.
Would self-portraiture serve us as much as a healing tool if we did it in isolation?
It really is about how we see ourselves, right?
Yet I keep on thinking about the community aspect of Be Your Own Beloved and of my own experience in my early days of self-portraiture, sharing them on Flickr (which Flickr was the hub of photo sharing…the way Instagram now seems to be).
The support of community feels like a vital part of the healing potential of self-portraiture.
For example, in Be Your Own Beloved, I feel like my prompts are only one half of what has helped people see themselves with kindness through their cameras. The other half is without a doubt, the community experience.
It happens every single time I offer the class, from day one.
The way immediately people start showing up for one another, for total strangers, with such kindness.
The way every single session, the comments are without criticism, without judgement.
There has truly never been a comment I’ve seen that was insensitive or mean. Ever! Not even remotely.
The way people who didn’t expect to want to be a part of the community element end up finding what they didn’t know they needed in the community.
The way our past experiences of people being critical of our self-portraits becomes proven wrong.
Somehow it access that place in us that is so full of kindness, so eager to treat others with the kindness we’d like to be treated with.
I think too many of us have experienced sharing a photo and having someone close to us say something critical about it, or mock it. Then others might not ever share photos of themselves because of fear of that happening. We can be paralyzed & shamed by the power of what other people might think of us. Even if they have never said those negative things, we fear they will.
Maybe we even fear that someone will say the kind of negative things our own inner critic might say.
Then we come into the class and the opposite happens. People comment on our photos, people say kind things, strangers become friends, we see ourselves reflected back in other peoples experiences too. We get so inspired by other people’s bravery that we can’t help but step further outside of our comfort zone.
I think the power of community in an experience like this is that it balances a lack of support we might be experiencing externally (be it the fear or the reality of someone criticizing us).
Not only that, but it helps to balance out the negative voices of our own inner critic.
It gives us proof that other people see us with kindness, which can’t help but invite us to perhaps see ourselves with a bit more kindness ourselves.
I think I will always want to offer this class in the community setting because without that element of it, out inner critic might speak even louder. Of course, our inner critic is also a vital part of this process as we need to stand up to it, listen to what it has to say and then make a different choice than we might be used to. We need to push past it take the photo. Yet once we listen to it, once we push past it and choose to take that photo, we are met with a kindness we might not have been able to have imagined.
The space that we create by choosing to not be stopped by our inner critic is greeted with love.
Not just by ourselves, but by community.
We each treat one another with that kindness & support we would treat a beloved (even if they are a complete stranger).
And through that, we can’t help but begin the path to treating ourselves that way.
Should we share our photos with other social media though, outside the safety of a class? I feel like some social media tends to be more aligned with this kind of supportive energy that balances out the negativity. For example I feel much more comfortable sharing lots of self-portraits on Instagram than I do Facebook. The important thing is that we get to decide where we share them and which photos we do share.
Much like with the classes, if you don’t share a photo, we don’t get the chance to give you that support. If we listen to the criticism of ‘selfies’, we allow ourselves to feel shamed into not sharing our photos online (I know lots of you have shared that the recent negative posts about selfies on the internet have invited you to feel more cautious to share photos online).
But if we listen to that negative voice, we let our inner critic stop us before we even have the chance to be supported.
I think much of the criticism of sharing our self-portraits on social media is that we are hungry for other people’s approval. I hope this post might give another perspective to why we might want to share our photos online. It isn’t just about getting other people’s approval…it is about courageously sharing our photos and accepting the kind words of people. Sure there is always a chance of being criticized…but what if we aren’t?
So I dare you, today, to push past your inner critic and let us cheer you on. Share a self-portrait with the hashtag #beyourownbeloved and I’ll get to see it and leave you a comment (I check that hashtag daily…especially on Instagram) so let yourself experience a little bit of the community energy of #beyourownbeloved today as you dip your toes into sharing a self-portrait online!
Actually I double dare you! The second dare is to click on the hashtag and leave someone who is sharing a self-portrait a kind comment…or someone on your Instagram or Facebook feed who is sharing a self-portrait!
*
Or come join me and an amazing community of women from around the world for Be Your Own Beloved!
I think the community energy of the class is often a sweet surprise for people, that they had no clue would be awaiting them but I wanted to share it with you today in case a fear holding you back might be sharing your photos with strangers. I wanted to share with you that they will be held with kindness and I hope that you’ll gift yourself with this community experience at some point as it truly is something special!