Learn to See Yourself with Compassion

December 30, 2014

A Look Back at 2014 in Self-Portraits

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Each year I like to make a point of pausing at the end of the year to look back at the visual story of the year that my self-portrait practice has created.

Wanna try it? It can even be as simple as taking 2 minutes to look back at your Instagram or Flickr Feed (where ever you share most of your photos) or use this as a prompt for your own blog post and ponder things like:

Which ones feel like they tell the story of your year?

Which ones embody the ways you have grown/healed/changed throughout the year?

Which photos jump out at you?

What about this year feel important to be a part of the narrative you want to tell about this year (cause remember…we get to be the narrators of our own story)?

It always feels powerful to gather the photos together. Which ones feel important? Which just make me smile? Which ones do I even leave out and why?

I suppose I really do these posts for me (which is why I wanted to invite you to offer yourself the same) but I also hope that they’ll be of inspiration to pull out your camera more next year and be in the visual story of your own life!

You can check out the 2012 post here.

And the 2013 post here!

I confess 2014 began intensely. My beloved Grammy passed away in late January and my heart was broken. Self-care had to be at the forefront as grief took hold and I really wasn’t sure how the year would go. Thankfully, as the year progressed it gave way to lots of adventures, time with family and of course, a whole lot of teaching and self-portrait taking. Looking back on these photos I see the stories woven in the spaces between these photos, the ones that you have to have lived it to know.

I see a woman who has been truly lucky to go on some mighty fun adventures this year to the Bay Area, Nashville and who also really began to take advantage of the beauty that my own city holds and get out exploring it more! I also see a woman who returned again and again to taking photo walks as a way to offer myself care and compassion, especially in a year like this one where it felt more vital than ever. I also can’t help but notice how the way I dress has changed. I felt less afraid to show my body this year (though my body didn’t change…I did) and there are more bare arms and more short wearing in these than I could have imagined!

I see peace making, adventuring, grieving, healing, walking, wandering, light catching and a whole lot of dancing!

So here is a look back at 2014 in self-portraits (all taken with my DSLR)!

January

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February

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March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Especially if you have started taking selfies this year…what about gifting yourself with doing a post like this? Look back on each month of the year and pick your favourites or pick your top 12 of the year as a whole?

Why not gift yourself with this time even if you just look back on your year and acknowledge what happened, what has changed and how far you’ve come with stepping into the story of your life through your camera?

Or if you’re wondering how to make 2015 a year where you get your camera out more and step into your visual story…join me for the Be Your Own Beloved E-Course or if an E-Book is more your style, check out the Beloved Camera E-Book!

December 27, 2014

20 Posts to Inspire your Self-Love Path!

As 2014 comes to a close, I like to gather up all the posts I shared here at Be Your Own Beloved over the year that explore the core message I share here: Seeing Yourself with Compassion which of course includes body acceptance, healing our relationship to our self-image, cultivating self-love and self-care and talking openly about my own experience of healing my relationship to my own body image and self-esteem (in hopes it will be helpful for you on your path).

When I sat down to write this I had no clue that I wrote 20 posts on the subject this year! Click on the ones that resonate most with you and I hope that they’ll help inspire you on your own self-love & selfie path!

I truly can’t wait for 2015 and what I have in store for you here on the blog and with the E-Courses (with something new up my sleeve)! Presently there are 2 classes open for registration…The Cultivating Self-Care E-Course and the much loved Be Your Own Beloved class (exploring self-love through self-portraiture)!

So we go…20 posts exploring self-love & self-compassion for you to enjoy!

Our inner critics rise up when we’re leaving our comfort zone, don’t they…which indeed happens on a path to heal our relationship to our bodies. This post is all about how our inner critics reflect our actions. When we stay small, they feel no need to attack us but when we rise up and make change (like seeing ourself with kindness rather than critique) they rise up too.

When we’re on a mission to heal our self-image (and in life in general), it can be easy to get in the constant cycle of working towards our goal that we don’t realize how far we’ve come!

This one is actually a series of posts called Making Peace with Our Smiles and you can find links to all 5 of the activities on this page! You can try the activities any time and use the hashtag #beyourownbeloved to join the community of folks exploring the prompts!

It’s time to stop being our own bully! Seriously…it’s time. Cause so many of us speak to ourselves in a way we wouldn’t even fathom speaking to someone else (which is of course, the idea behind this website and e-courses)!

This post came in response to the comment I know lots of us must get when talking about learning to love our bodies…that “we aren’t our bodies” or “shouldn’t we focus more on ours spirit?”. From my experience, disconnecting the self-love journey from how we exist in our bodies hasn’t served me. It is happening within a body. About a body. To disconnect the self-love journey from my body is to discount a whole deep well of potential healing.

How does movement and dance help us feel more embodied? This post explores that and explains why I dance in so many of my selfies (hint…its all for the healing)!

Are you missing from the visual story of your life? This post explores how choosing to let ourselves be in photos can be deeply healing and also feel like we are finding our voice in telling the story of our lives.

Reclaim your power and be the narrator of your own story! This is a big part of exploring selfies as self-love as it is a tool for us to reclaim our sense of personal power and step into being the narrator of how we see our bodies and the story we tell ourselves about our lives. We get to choose the kind of story we want to live!

Making Peace with my body in a bikini! Oh my gosh…I still can’t believe I shared this post but I’m glad I did. There are lots of amazing plus size gals rockin’ bikini’s this year (now that thankfully, companies are making that kind of bathing suit in our size). For me, wearing it felt great but when I paused to take a photo, old stories rose up! But that’s what happens when we go outside of our comfort zones, isn’t it!

How do we know when we’ve found our way home to ourselves? There has been a song lyric that has felt like a guide for me that says “When the voice that is talking is never your own. Then who’s going to tell you that you’ve finally come home” by Ferron. Cultivating our own voice is such a big part of healing how we feel about our bodies. This post digs into that journey!

Inspired by a talk at Creative Mornings by the awesome Kim Werker, this post explores the idea of the story we tell ourselves about failure, especially the story we tell ourselves about failing at being photogenic!

The post Making Peace with my Belly explores the good/bad, love/hate cycle I’ve been on in relation to how I feel about my belly and how I want to get off of that roller coaster and feel at peace with it!

Selfies get flack for being self-centred and for being a way that people seek attention. But so many of us aren’t taking our selfies for anyone else, but for ourselves. This post shares a story of how I got caught up in wanting people to like my selfie one day and how it became a reminder that how when we can ground ourselves in how we feel about ourselves, other people’s perception of us feels like it holds less weight (and we find we aren’t seeking others approval)!

A question I often get at in person workshop when digging into self-love through self-portraiture is…”But how do I take a flattering photo” and this post explores another way to view ‘flattering’ that invites in more self-compassion!

What do we do when the critique is coming not from ourselves, but from people in our lives? This post shares some tips for dealing with not just our inner critics but our outer critics too. I explore it in the context of sharing our selfies but it definitely applies to other experiences of people commenting on our bodies or our choices!

Do photos ever catch you off guard and your inner critic rises up? I had an experience of that and am sharing some tips for what to do when that happens!

If you’ve been wondering how this whole self-love through selfies thing works…this is for you! Cause really…it’s not just about the photo. The photo (and the camera) are tools, just like you might seek self-compassion in yoga or meditation! It isn’t just about the end result either, but about the journey we take in getting there!

I don’t know about you, but when my inner critic shows up it usually tells me that I’m doing it wrong (you know, whatever I’m trying to do be it cook or run or dance). So if your inner critic rises up when you’re taking a selfie and tells you you are doing it wrong…this is for you.

When we say “When I’m thin I’ll…” or “When I make _______ change I’ll….” and we imagine a life for ourselves other than the one we are living. This post digs into the idea of living that ‘parallel life’ (inspired by one of my favourite authors, Geneen Roth).

And last, but definitely not least…Her Body Was not Wrong. And neither is yours!

December 19, 2014

What My Photo Stream Really Looks Like!

We all know that in the world of social media selfies, we are only seeing one curated image. So I thought today I’d share the photos that go along with the one I would have posted!

It’s one of the secret tricks that I share in Be Your Own Beloved…that the way to get that one photo you really love isn’t to try to be ‘perfect’ but instead to be playful. Shake of nervousness or the pressure to take a perfect selfie and instead have fun and put yourself at ease. Try it…I dare you! Give yourself 1-2 minutes (even set a timer) and get silly! Oh, and share it on social media using the #beyourownbeloved hashtag so I can cheer you on!

December 18, 2014

Getting through the Grey

I don’t know about you, but where I live we are deep in the middle of the grey and rainy winter.

While I adore where I live, this part of the year gets tough.

When the days are so short and there is so little light to soak in during the day. Thankfully we’ve had a bit of sun here and there, but still…I feel like self-care is so pivotal right now and it’s been on my mind so much more.

Which is a big part of why I wanted to bring back the Self-Care Class this season. I’ll be sharing more about my own self-care tools with the class participants but one of my favourite tools is going for photo walks.

In the spring time I like to make a practice of going out for a photo walk in the last hour of the day as the sun starts to fall away. A few weeks ago when I realized that it was starting to get dark at around 4pm I decided that as many days as possible I was going to pause from my work (I usually work at home in the afternoons) and get out for a short photo walk at around 3pm.

Some days, especially when it’s raining, it has been as short as walking the half block to the alley way, to the path around my house and back. Which takes a total of about 2 minutes max.

Other days I’ll go a few blocks and sometimes even further.

Somedays I’ll come home with photos to post and other days I don’t. Cause to me photo walks aren’t just about getting photos. They are about making space to slow down, to notice, to feel engaged with the natural and human world. In this case I notice what light we do have as it is about to fall away. Even if there aren’t the rays of light that fall in the spring. Even if it is raining.

Because to tell you the truth. I didn’t fall in love with photography on a sunny day. It was a grey day when I jumped in a puddle and decided to try to take a photo of it with my new (now old school) flip phone with the super crappy camera and that moment when I felt myself fall in love with the potential to capture a moment.

It wasn’t the gorgeously radiant days only that helped this become a healing tool for me. It was a multitude of rainy days when I’d go out when the rain paused with my macro lens to capture the water droplets.

And while I sure do love a radiant sunny day for capturing a self-portrait, largely because of the way it enriches the story…the light isn’t the only thing that makes a photo shine. It is gifting ourselves with the space to tell our story. It is us that shines too.

So while I’m feeling that overwhelm of this season with so much less light, it’s the time that I need to come back to tools I’ve been using this whole time. It’s about opening my heart again and again to the ways that the camera can be self-care and how even these short photo walks fill my well.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into self-care this season and and want to know more about the Self-Care class, head on over here!

December 17, 2014

Cultivating Self-Care

Lately I’ve been craving to revisit my self-care plan. I have a collection of ways I like to cultivate self-care in my own life, and keep my own well filled up. Some things (like getting outside for walks) are still a thriving part of my self-care while other things have gone to the wayside (like my Monday Morning solo coffee & journaling date).

Plus, the new year feels like the right time. In the past couple years I’ve committed more than ever to my own personal path towards body acceptance and with that, resolutions just don’t feel like the right kind of goal setting for me anymore. So I’ve been planning to revisit the tools in my Self-Care Policies Class starting January 1st as a way to reconnect and revise my own self-care plan.

But then I thought, why not invite you to join me and we can explore them together!

This is normally a self-paced class but I’m running it once in 2015 as a community class! We already have lots of folks signed up to join and I think it’ll be a mighty powerful way to get inspired to make 2015 the year we dig deeper into self-care and self-compassion!

Oh, and you may notice the title has now changed to Cultivating Self-Care. I still love the idea of creating self-care policies but it sounds so formal and almost like you’ll be in trouble if you don’t fulfill your policy! But that isn’t the case and if you’ve taken a class with me you’ll know that self-compassion and playfulness are at the forefront of everything I teach, so I wanted to make the title more gentle (in case you were wondering about that)!

So, you are invited to come spark the year with self-compassion and explore these tools that I hope will help you make more space in your day, week and your year for self-care! Oh, and did I mention it’s super affordable at only $39!

Come join us!