Category Archives: Be Yourself

November 8, 2013

Eye to Eye

eyetoeye

When teaching Be Your Own Beloved, I like to do the prompts alongside the participants.

Because there is always more self-love work to do.

Because I often get different realizations from the same prompt.

Because I believe in this class.

Because I need the prompts too.

Today was one of those days when I woke up knowing what today’s prompt is and had a bit of resistance to doing it. Because, of course, it was the prompt I most needed to do today.

You see, lately I’ve been really excited about some of the ways I’m hoping to bring Be Your Own Beloved to the world in bigger ways, really hopeful about some potential opportunities, really just believing in myself in a way that is kind of new to me. I felt so excited that I seemed to get out of my own way and really step into being brave in ways where I would usually be filled with fear.

Then, one of those opportunities didn’t end up happening (which is the way things go) and last night I felt that hope and belief in myself and this work falter. Or rather fall to the ground in a big THUD.

I’ve been working for a long time to make my belief in myself not be based around other people’s acceptance of me or my work, but dudes…I’m so human…and there is so much more work to be done.

So this morning, I pulled out my iPhone, despite my resistance (and as I tell the participants…we have to follow that resistance as its a clue that transformation is ahead) and did today’s prompt for the class.

I’m not going to spill the exact prompt (as I want you to experience it for yourself….come join us for the next session in February) but I altered it a bit, knowing what I needed to do today and I looked her in the eye, in the camera and said:

“I believe in you” and had to say it a few times before I really felt it.

As much as today I really wanted to run from myself, from disappointment, from tenderness. I had ironically provided myself with the exact prompt I needed today. To not run from myself.

But rather to show up for her. To look her in the eye and tell her what she most needed to hear.

And I’m doing my best to listen.

What do you most need to hear today? Could you say those words to yourself (even if its hard to do)?

May 2, 2013

The New Path

I ended last year feeling lost and this year quickly shifted into something I didn’t expect. Something that made that lostness feel like it made sense. This year I’m feeling a clarity of purpose that I’ve never felt. I think sometimes we naturally feel deeply lost or scared just before birthing something new, right? Of course that is hard to remember in the midst of the lostness.

I realized that I haven’t outright told you about this new path, though I’m sure you are seeing the changes in the courses offered and the new title of this site. The new path is all about being your own beloved and cultivating self-compassion through self-portraiture.

Something happened this February when I offered Be Your Own Beloved. There was something within me shouting ‘This!!! This is it. This is what you need to focus on. This is how you can be most of service in the world. This is your IT’. I just felt a clarity I had never felt really in my life let alone in business. For so much of my life I felt like I had no clue what my purpose was so to feel it, to feel a little taste of clarity kind of blew me away.

In these last few years of teaching e-courses it has been incredible to teach such a wide variety of classes. Everything from making videos to seeing photography through the lens of the chakras. A super wide range. So, its been a bit of a process to realize that by feeling so focused on #beyourownbeloved and truly be able to be of service through it, I needed to stop offering all the other classes. So this is what I wanted to tell you today.

It has been an honour to help people see that they can make videos and get past their fear of technology, it has been amazing to help people see that they are artists and photographers and explore self-portraiture through discovering tools of photography but I truly feel so clear that what really lights me up, what really feels like what I can most be of service in….is helping people see their own worthiness and help them bring more self-love into their lives through their cameras. That it isn’t about our cameras or our photography skill or how ‘perfect’ of an image we can get.

It is about telling our story.

It is about showing up in front of the camera seeking that self-love.

It is about resiliency.

It is about using the tools that might feel like the ways that negative self-talk may most be prevalent (like seeing images of ourselves) and taking the power back, reclaiming that tool as a way to cultivate self-love.

Its all about the love.

There are new classes coming, but they are all focused around self-portraiture, self-love and self-care and this feels really right.

So I wanted to share this with you in case you were awaiting the next Montage session or hoping the Chakra class was coming back (I’m even still on the fence about continuing to offer YAYOM…its my baby, my first born and I may still offer it but way less frequently than I have been). These courses may appear again in a self-paced or E-Book form though!

I hope you’ll join me in continuing to explore seeing ourselves with kindness through our cameras!

January 21, 2013

Engaged

Oh don’t get too excited…I don’t mean engaged in that way (I’m barely dating)!

But that is the word that is on the tip of my tongue for the last few days. You’d think it was even my word of the year.

Or YES. Yes is what this year feels like so far. Open. Hopeful.

I feel like I’m falling deeper in love with my work right now. You know that stage where you’ve been together for a while and you know you love each other but then you get to a place where you shift to a deeper, less fearful kind of love? Thats what right now feels like.

Neither YES nor ENGAGED are my words of the year (I’m writing a post coming this week that will share what it is) but this years word of the year came to me totally from intuition and I feel like it was the right choice.

One of the things that is helping me feel so beautifully engaged with my work right now is the wonderful Jennifer Lee‘s workshop this past weekend on CreativeLIVE. It was a 3 day Right Brain Business Plan workshop and though I’ve done lots of RBBP activities with Jenn before, revisiting them always brings things out big new revelations and lets me dive even deeper.

An incredible thing that happened too which was I was invited to join in for a skype call live with Jennifer during the workshop. I shared some of what I had done in the activities and then what unfolded was a beautiful conversation with Jenn and the online audience. They asked some wonderful questions and I felt comfortable just being me and sharing a bit about my business and the vulnerabilities and adventures that happened along the way. I felt so seen, heard and that what I had to say was helpful to other creative entrepreneurs. Thank you so much to Jennifer and CreativeLIVE for having me.

I’m actually kind of head over heels for CreativeLIVE now. Their format for workshops is that it is free as you watch it live (and then you can purchase a download of the course which you very much might want to to)! What I found extra special was the way they have moderators who help bring forward the online audience’s questions so you really feel like you are a part of the workshop, even if you are sitting at home in your p.j’s!

I’m crossing my fingers this deeply engaged feeling sticks around as it doesn’t leave a lot of room for the self-doubt gremlins to get ahold of me and I think last year contained a bit too much of that for my liking. I’m mighty happy for the respite from it and this newfound space to just create, write, photograph and dream in a deeply engaged, YES provoking, heart-filled kind of way.

I always try to make my days productive, but the last few days have had me taking leaps and bounds into projects I had a lot of fear around getting started (the resisting a big dream kind of fear) and I’m excited to keep this momentum going.

I so truly wish the same for you on your creative journey too…

November 29, 2012

Behind the Whimsy

Behind the twirling is a tightly wound sense of self-protection, from being told the way I moved my body was wrong.

Behind the jumping is a feeling of being held down by gravity, believing that nothing would ever change.

Behind the swirl of a skirt is a girl who sits on her hands as otherwise they fidget and fly freely when she talks.

Behind the feet standing in a ray of light is a woman who thought she was invisible.

Behind the dance is a life long journey to feel present in her own skin.

Behind the photo is something different than the viewer might see.

But the story the viewer sees is just as important. That craving to feel free, to create spaces where one can ‘dance like no one is watching’, but if I don’t tell you that there are deeper stories behind these images where I am cultivating whimsy and freedom, I fear you might believe that whimsy is something frivolous or some utopian place you can’t go.

But you can.

Whimsy is respite.

Twirling is freedom.

Jumping is release.

Dancing is self-love.

And we all deserve to stand in the light.

Behind the photo is a much different story than what you see but I want you to remember the whimsy, to seek out those moments for yourself, in whatever way that happens for you.

Because to me, whimsy isn’t wimpy. It isn’t childlike. It isn’t goofy. It is sacred and radical.

October 28, 2012

The Urge to Quit {and why I won’t}

In the last week I have been feeling a whole lot of feelings about running a creative business.

Tough ones. Caught in a ball in my throat constantly threatening to spill out in the form of tears feelings.

Stuff I haven’t felt since before I began. In fact almost exactly what I felt before I began offering e-courses.

Of invisibility.

Of aloneness.

Of feeling a tiny fish in a really big pond and not really being able to swim with the big fishes.

Of not wanting to be a ‘big’ or really well known, but just wanting to feel ‘seen’ and finding a place where I fit in.

Of feeling like I don’t fit in where I thought I would.

Of ‘who am I to’?

Of not being enough and that for everything I teach there is someone teaching it to a bigger audience.

I have been having these feelings like I want to quit my creative work (which I have really never felt in these last 2 years as I feel absolutely grateful that I have been able to do this work). Still, I’m getting the urge to run away.

But I won’t run.

I know this present space will lead me to deepen what I can offer to the world, recommit to my creative work on a more soul-purpose level and will deeply reinforce the importance of making people feel seen in my classes.

I know that there is a place online and in person where I do fit in, where I do feel seen.

I know that this feeling of wanting to run away means that there is something important I still have to do.

I also owe it to those women who have decided to ‘be their own muse’ not to quit.

But truthfully, I wanted to spill this now, in the midst of it {when it truly feels like shit}.

Not just after, when I’ve had a ‘realization’ or made it through to the new discovery.

In case you’re where I am or have been there, or in case it comes in the future. I want you to know you are not alone and not to quit whatever it is (be it opening an etsy shop or teaching a workshop) if the urge to quit comes from fear.

This whole photography journey for me came from a feeling of emptiness. Of sitting with that emptiness and seeing what it had to teach me. Of not running away from it. So I know, whatever this present urge to quit or to give up is, it is a teacher.

I’ll listen to it, journal through it and keep moving forward into whatever is next.