Category Archives: Uncategorized

June 27, 2014

Book Review – Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion

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I’m thrilled to be starting a brand new series here on the blog…book reviews!

If you’ve been joining me for a while here, you’ve likely been seeing this coming (and many of you have been asking for it too) is Book Reviews of Body Acceptance and Self-Love books! I’ve got so many planned for you and am excited to gush about our favourite Body Love books together!

For the last year I’ve been on a big kick of reading book that dig into exploring loving our bodies more. They have been a big range, from more academic books to lots and lots of memoirs of folks path to self-love & body love (my favourite genre).

I feel pretty grateful to be able to live in a city where our library system is big, with amazing librarians who get these kinds of books into the system.

But every so often there is one that I get from the library and just have to go out and buy as I just don’t want to be without it. The book I’m going to share a bit about today is one of those. Even its cover alone made me say ‘Heck Yes’!

This amazing book is called Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion edited by the amazing Virgie Tovar, a fat activist & sexologist. This year she started the #losehatenotweight campaign which totally sings to my heart!

So when I recently saw that Virgie was inviting people to check out the audiobook version of the book, I jumped on it. I had read most of the stories in book form but I have also been on a BIG audiobook kick lately, so was excited to check it out.

I loaded it onto my phone, clicked play and immediately squealed when I realized who’s voice that was narrating the book: Joy Nash. Have you heard about Joy Nash? You might have seen this awesome video called A Fat Rant that went viral a while back.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook as I went about my days over these past few weeks. One of the things I loved most about it was the way Joy was able to bring the writers voice through. Its not as though she changed her voice at all as though she was taking on the ‘character’ of the writer at all, but rather, having someone who is deeply passionate about the topic of the book and the stories brought that passion in the writers words through. You could just hear the passion in her voice as she said the writers words.

The experiences shared in this book are vary, which is something I really appreciated about it. Some of the stories brought me to tears, some felt like they were speaking my story, others felt more like I was listening to an experience I hadn’t lived myself and wanted to just listen as though a friend was sharing her story with me (and one of the biggest ways we can be an ally is to listen and learn from others experiences, right)! That is part of the charm of audiobooks, is that it feels much like a conversation, listening to a friend share her vulnerable stories or tell us a tale of how she found her way to see her body & herself in a new way.

I loved that there was a story from a woman in her 80’s alongside much younger folks experiences and so many in between. As with so many books, there is always room for more voices, more diversity, but I thought this one contained a beautiful mix.

And guess what…Virgie has given me a copy of the audiobook to giveaway to one lucky winner! Yup…this is a giveaway!!!

To enter the audiobook giveaway just leave a comment on this post.

Note: If you don’t see your comment immediately, don’t worry…with the way my comments work I often need to approve comments so it will indeed appear soon after you post it!

I’ll be picking the lucky winner this Sunday at 5pm Pacific time.

Of course, if you don’t want to wait another minute to dig into the audio book, you can purchase it over here!

Lets embrace our fierce fabulous selves!

June 27, 2014

PDX Photo Walk!

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Are you going to be in Portland for the World Domination Summit or do you live there? If so…come along with me for a Photo Walk on Friday July 11th from 12:30-2!

Of course, it isn’t a workshop, but rather a way for us to connect! I hope to meet some of you Be Your Own Beloved alumni there…but it truly is open to anyone who’d like to come along and has an interest in gently exploring seeing themselves with kindness through their cameras!

If you’d like more info…come join the Facebook Event Page

(or if you aren’t on Facebook…just send me a message via the contact form and I can keep you posted on where we’ll be meeting up)!

June 26, 2014

Tips for Taking Travelling Selfies!

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Last week, I had the pleasure of being on the road to go to Anna Guest-Jelly & Curvy Yoga’s Curve Camp. I have a whole other post coming swooning over this event (it was INCREDIBLE) but alongside the event itself, my dear friend Liz Lamoreux and I added in a few extra days to really get the chance to soak up the Nashville experience.

It was such a hoot to get touristy and explore the city from that way and I took a LOT of photos and especially self-portraits along the way. I though I might share with you some tips I have for taking travel selfies & how to really capture the visual story of your trip!

Embrace Your Touristiness

The fun thing about travelling, is that if we give ourselves the permission to….we can embrace being a tourist! Now, I’m totally the type of traveller who usually likes to pretend I live there so I don’t always embrace my touristiness in an effort to blend in & try to experience the ‘everydayness’ of a city. On this trip though…I definitely went all out touristy and it really made the trip.

In a place like downtown Nashville, it is tourist galore and it was easy to get unabashedly touristy (and really these days, its folks of all ages embracing the arms length selfie)! One of my favourite ways to get touristy was to get ‘photobombed’ by all of the photos & statues of celebrities there. As you can see, we had the Elvis photo but the fun continued as we got a pic of Rayna & Juliette (of the TV show Nashville) and of course Dolly Parton photobombing us too! I dare you to try it next time the moment arises. Was it potentially embarrassing? Heck yes…but sometimes these potentially embarrassing moments feel so freeing to do anyways and end up with big belly laughter (which makes for a good trip don’t you think)!

Of course, you can also play tourist in your own town too and just go for it!

Embrace all sorts of types of Selfies!

One of the easiest ways to take a selfie is to reach out our arms for an arms length photo. As we’re travelling, we are also likely to find all sorts of opportunities for other types of selfie moments!

One of my favourite photos on the trip was seeing our long shadows when we went to the backstage tour of the Grand Ole Opry. Its a fun way to get a group photo that is also low pressure! The photo on the right was a moment when I saw our reflections backlit in the Country Music Hall of Fame and asked Liz to pause with me to take the photo. While I took many other selfies and photos in both of these experiences, these two are my favourite. Sometimes when we capture the unexpected, it helps tell the story of our experience even more!

Reflections, shadows, aiming at our feet and putting down the camera are all great ways to break out of the mould of the arms length selfie when on our travelling adventures!

Take Group Photos

Oh my…this made my trip asking the participants if they’d join me in a group selfie! It can be a great way to get a little bit of folks we meet along the way, asking them to come along with us!

It might be someone we have a great chat with on the bus to our destination or a group we are travelling with! One trick to getting lots of people in the photo is to have them be a bit further back in the photo (you know…in case you were wondering how we got everyone in this)!

Find Murals or Street Art

One of my favourite ways to get to know a city is to get to know its murals. Whether it is a small town or a big city, murals often help a place share a part of its history in a visual way and it is a great way to get to more about where you are. Places like Clarion Alley in San Francisco are full of murals, but quite honestly, there is rarely a town or city where I haven’t seen at least one. They are everywhere!

In Nashville, I had heard there was a Johnny Cash mural and had hoped to find it. I asked a few folks downtown if they knew where it was, but no one seemed to. But then just when we had some time to spare, Liz & I happened to drive past it and were able to jump out of the car to take a few photos with it (the photo on the left was taken by Liz).

Not only does a mural tell us about the city, but it makes for a great drop back for photos! So next time you are travelling and see a local mural, I dare you to go for it!

Find Makeshift Tripods

Most of us aren’t likely to have a tripod with us on all of our trips, so to be sure to add ourselves into the photo we can think about what I like to call DIY tripods! As in…a bench, or a rock, or a railing (a wide one that would be stable for your camera of course)!

I often simply put my camera on top of my camera purse as a soft place to rest it and also get that ‘from the ground’ perspective!

You can find out more about DIY tripods in the Beloved Camera E-Book!

Tell the Visual Story of the Trip

One of the best things about getting our camera or phone out to take selfies & photos along the way is that we end up being able to look back at the visual story of our trip. Of course, we’ll want to have a balance between taking photos and really experiencing the trip (not just seeing it from behind the camera) but I know that for me when I don’t pull out my camera here & there, I miss being able to see that part of the journey when I look back at it.

So whether it is simple moments like having a Sangria with a friend on the hottest day you’ve ever experienced or finding heart shaped leaf on the ground just as you are leaving, we can take mere moments to snap a photo and add these into the story of our travels!

Take a Photo Walk

One other tip for taking travel selfies I have for you is to take a photo walk! A photo walk can be as simple as taking your camera or phone out with you for a few minutes with no other intention than to capture a bit of the beauty around you and maybe even add yourself into it! You just might find some gorgeous flowers to capture or want to pause in the beautiful morning or evening light!

It can be a great way to find some solo self-care time or for you early birds like me, to go on adventure while the rest of your travel crew continues to rest.

Want to learn to take better selfies?

Get the Selfie Starter Guide, a new E-Book from the Be Your Own Beloved Workshops!

This powerful 30 page E-Book will help answer both the creative and technical questions you might have around taking selfies!

Of course, being a Be Your Own Beloved E-Book it will also invite you to see yourself with kindness rather than critique!

June 17, 2014

Outside of the Comfort Zone: Volume 2

Since writing the first ‘Outside of Our Comfort Zones‘ post, this has been on my mind more than ever!

It seems as though by starting this series, I’ve given myself an unintentional DARE to get outside of my comfort zone as much as possible! I keep on catching myself trying to back into feelings of safety & having to push myself forward!

I had an outside the comfort zone activity in mind when I went on a short photo walk the other day to explore a movement related prompt in the Be Your Own Beloved class that is now running!

I was having such fun setting the timer and getting playful. I was intentionally trying to get out of my comfort zone by moving in ways that weren’t my norm, to get out of my movement comfort zone. I most definitely have ways that it feels like ‘me’ to move in photos, that just feel natural and the way my body naturally wants to move when I click the self-timer to take the photo.

So I was trying to do things a bit differently & see what happened, to move in ways that didn’t feel like the norm for me.

It was actually pretty hilarious to try.

Here are a few of those shots trying to get outside of my comfort zone on the left and on the right, are a few from when I moved back into moving my way…which is such a therapeutic part of the process for me!

I tried a few other locations and then took a peek at what I had taken and pondered which one I might share on social media…there was one that jumped out at me.

Yup, the one at the top of the post.

I loved the way I was moving it it, that didn’t feel like my norm and I dug that it looked like I was running into the frame.

I loved the background.

I loved the energy of it cause it looked like I was having fun.

But one thing stopped me. How my belly looked.

And my shirt, oh how it flowed and combined with my natural belly shape it looked as though I was pregnant in the photo.

It was definitely outside of my comfort zone and not just in the way I had planned.

Now, I’m not sharing this with you to get you to reassure me that it doesn’t look like I’m pregnant. For me, sharing a photo that is out of my comfort zone isn’t just about comments. I feel like when I share something that isn’t as flattering as other photos I might, I’m sharing them so you don’t just see the side of me that is the most curated, the most flattering at that fits inside a mould of what is beautiful.

For me these photos are about the whole picture and about sharing photos that are defined not by how flattering it is, but by about the story of the photo as a whole. Its colour, its textures, the way I move. Like we discuss in Be Your Own Beloved, its so easy to only define the value of a self-portrait only on how our bodies look…but, well, we are just so much more than only our bodies.

If I’m going to serve you best here with Be Your Own Beloved, it isn’t going to be by sharing only photos I feel ‘pretty’ in or the ones that get the most comments. It isn’t by only showing flattering photos of myself as inspiration. If the aim of this site & my work was to help you take flattering photos of yourself, then it would be…but that isn’t the goal here.

The goal is to help you see yourself with more compassion, more love, here and now. Even if you have a belly or a shirt that flows in your photo.

The goal is to help you see all the good things in a photo & not let that one thing (like my flowy shirt and belly) stop you from seeing it with love.

The goal is to live this work & get brave with it in hopes it will help you feel more comfortable seeing yourself with love here and now.

So while this photo could have just been an outtake (as of course, we don’t need to love every single photo)

I’m glad it ended up being the one that had something to teach me

And that wanted to be seen with compassion.

Today is the last day to enter to win 1 of 3 spots I’m giving away for the brand new Summer of Selfie Love class! Head on over to the Facebook Page to enter!!

June 16, 2014

The Summer of Self(ie) Love & a GIVEAWAY!

Imagine a summer where you rocked a tank top, or shorts, or even a bikini…without the usual body-talk inner critics following you around.

Imagine a summer where you took moments here and there just for you.

Imagine a summer where you felt like you made room for a little swooning, to feel like love is in the air and that you are cultivating the space to receive that love (from yourself).

Imagine a summer where you didn’t shy away from the camera or hide behind it, where you were in the visual story of your life.

Imagine a summer of self-love.

You are invited to join me in a special summery Be Your Own Beloved class! We’ll explore the powerful tool of taking selfies & self-portraits to cultivate more self-love in our lives & to shift the way we see ourselves in images!

To celebrate the launch of the class…I’m actually giving away 3 spots in it! Come on over to the Be Your Own Beloved Facebook Page to enter (the giveaway ends tomorrow, June 17th at 5pm Pacific time so don’t delay in entering)!

Find out more about the Summer of Self(ie) Love here!