Category Archives: Self-Care

May 26, 2015

Limitless Love

vivlove2

Tonight the golden light drew me out of my house, camera in hand to stroll a few blocks around the neighbourhood and I found my way to stand and soak in that light. I always bring my camera but there is no pressure to try to get ‘the shot’ anymore. I just let intuition guide me towards the story that needs to be told that night through the camera.

This night, in an alley I love to pause in the quiet and take photos in, I lifted up my camera to take a photo, arm’s length style.

Then another, and another. The clicking rhythmic, pulsing.

Until a voice, an old one, rose up in my thoughts and said “Isn’t that enough?”

It didn’t stop there. “If people were watching they’d think you were your own personal paparazzi, wouldn’t they?”

Before I even had a second to realize that old inner dialogue was happening another voice in me rose up. This one, my own personal inner mama-bear.

It fiercely said this:

No.

There is no limit.

You can take as many as you need to. For as long as you need to.

Every day for the rest of your life, if that’s what it takes.

You can take as many photos as it takes to heal.

There is no limit.

I found myself shocked at the words I just heard in my own head, fierce and true. I got choked up at this play between my inner critic and my inner protector.

My inner critic trying, as it usually does, to keep me playing small, even or perhaps especially in healing my relationship to worthiness, to enoughness, to how I see myself.

My inner protector the opposite. Claiming expansiveness.

That my inner protector, like a mama (or auntie) to a child saying “I love you to the moon and back”. It felt like that tonight. That the room I am willing to give myself in this time to heal and find my way back through the layers of learning I still have to do about worthiness, of being lovable, of letting myself be loved by myself and by others, of seeing myself and my body with deep abiding love.

There is no limit to my love that voice said and I will let you keep finding your way back to it.

We may have different tools to find our way to that love. Somehow, 9 years ago I found my way to the camera and realized it was the tool that would lead me home. Yours might be on the yoga mat. Or through pen to paper. Whatever brings you that respite, let there be no limit to when you’re ‘supposed to have it all figured out’. Let in expansiveness, limitless to our self-love, of how many times you might need to meet yourself in child’s pose or put that pen to paper. Let it not be a task, but a doorway to that love, one you look forward to meeting with.

Or maybe the camera could be a tool for you too?

That voice, that inner protector. Hearing it today choked me up because in so many ways, this is what I’ve been working so hard to hear. Sometimes it’s hard for me to explain the work we do in the Be Your Own Beloved class, the work that I do every night on these photo walks year after year…is about taking our own photo, but it’s about so much more.

It’s about turning the camera on ourselves and yes, knowing that inner critic is probably going to rise up. But we don’t stop there. We cultivate our own voice, choosing to not listen to our inner critic when it tries to make us stop and put away the camera in shame. We take another photo. We reclaim that voice and our personal power back. It’s a conscious choice to choose self-compassion over self-critique again and again until it our critic isn’t our go-to response.

Just like tonight, it’s not about our inner critics never rising up again. We can’t control that.

But it’s about building that self-compassion up so that when it does, we have the words to find our way back to ourselves. Sometimes, the words we didn’t even know we needed to hear.

I hope you hear those words today too, from my inner protector to yours.

There is no limit.

Take as many selfies, write as many poems, spill as many journal entries, meet yourself on the yoga mat as many times as you need to…there is no timeline you need to ‘achieve’ as we find our way to healing how we feel about our bodies, ourselves.

There is no timeline, no one path, no one roadmap.

You can take as long as you need to.

Let your love be limitless.

vivienne6

February 25, 2015

Let Yourself Shine

lightws

We were sitting out on the fire escape high above the street with glasses full of red wine. She was a crone with long black hair and looked like the picturesque witchy woman, which she was. We were talking about the city we lived in and the way it has a strange energy to it.

“Don’t ever let them put a blanket over your light” she said.

I’ve thought about those words so many times over the years. Mostly once I left that city. Because, you know what, I had a blanket over my light.

She was so right. I don’t think it was anyone else who put it over me, or the city, I most definitely put it over myself. It was cozy and safe under there.

That blanket has stayed there for a long time. It was heavy, dark and definitely my safety zone. I walked the world with this blanket of fear, afraid to show my light, afraid that they’d tell me:

“Who are you to try to shine like that?”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Don’t try and show off. Just accept things as they are.”

“You aren’t good enough.”

I listened to those voices for a long time.

A LONG time.

Mediocrity was a comfortable place for me. Not letting my light shine was safe and not scary. I was protecting myself.

After a while it didn’t work anymore. Mediocrity is not enough. It was suffocating, sad and stagnant. I wanted more than that.

So I started to believe in myself again, believe that I had something to offer. I didn’t know what it was, especially since I had been hiding my light for so long.

For a long time I had 4 pages ripped out of a magazine taped to my apartment wall which contained these words:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

-Anais Nin

I would read that quote every day. I knew some day it would be worth the risk to blossom. Then the time came and I was wracked with fear.

I gathered up my courage and peeked out from underneath that blanket covering my light.

Hello?

Hello, hello, hello the world echoed.

Just in case that was just a coincidence, I tried again.

Hello?

Hello, hello, hello the world echoed back at me again.

Okay. It seemed pretty safe out there. Safe enough to stick my head out and see. It wasn’t as scary as I’d feared. I walked around with my head emerged, still having the blanket around me taking special care to keep my heart protected.

Slowly I let the blanket drift lower and let more of myself emerge. Eventually my heart was left exposed. It beat loudly, adrenaline pumping.

“Cover yourself…this is too much”.

“Are you crazy, I’m wildly exposed here” it said.

So my heart and I had a little conversation.

Dear Heart

Having a blanket over your light, suffocating your dreams, is not the love I want to give you. You are worth a better kind of self-love.

Just because I am letting my dreams emerge, it doesn’t mean that I won’t protect you.

Trust me.

Love,

Vivienne

It calmed to a regular heartbeat. Regulating and surprised itself by actually enjoying the sun shining down on it rather than being hidden in fear.

The blanket fell further until it wasn’t needed anymore.

I didn’t leave it behind though. Sometimes things are so scary to let emerge that they need blankets, they need to ease into existence rather than jump in full force.

Some days I still need to hide under it. To keep in touch with that part of me that is scared. Fear is an important part of the creative process. There have been times when I hide back under there for a while until it is time to emerge with a new idea or new dream.

It feels so intriguing to me that when I really think about it, my work now teaching self-portraiture e-courses is just this. It is about taking a medium that some people perceive as ‘vain’ and turning that on its head. My work is about helping people pull that blanket of fear off of themselves and giving them tools to allow themselves to shine. It is about creating a community that echos back at you ‘you are so wonderful’ loudly and clearly so you know you are not alone.

As well, sometimes people may try and put a blanket over you and so many of us are experts at putting blankets over our own light.

Just promise me that if you are indeed hiding your light like I have been…that some day when you are ready, you will lift up the corner of it and shout out “hello”. I will promise you that the world will echo back at you.

January 28, 2015

A Love Letter to Your Body

If you were going to write your body a love note today…what would it say?

In Be Your Own Beloved we have a love note activity we do and it’s one I return to regularly as a tool for both connecting and making peace with my body, especially on tough days.

On this day, my love letter to my body went like this:

Dear Belly
I’m so sorry I made you ingest gluten last week and that you’ve been in pain ever since. Even after 20 years of being gluten free in so many ways it is still a day to day process of listening to you and remembering what I know you need (or rather don’t need) in order to feel at peace and not in pain.
But I’m on your side.
Love Vivienne

I posted this photo and the short love note below over on Instagram and asked you guys over on the Beloved Facebook Page what you’d write to your body today and I’m so grateful for the love notes y’all have shared over there. Feel free to add your love note over there and get inspired what others are sharing! Or if you decide to try this as a blog post or an Instagram prompt, share a link to it in the comments (or tag #beyourownbeloved on Instagram) so I can witness your love note and leave you a comment!

December 30, 2014

A Look Back at 2014 in Self-Portraits

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

February

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!