hey, crumb cake.

so, i like to stick mah face in flowers. especially for my birthday (yes it was over a week ago. no I'm not done celebrating lol)

consider this an invitation to YOU, to get all up in the things you love

and to document yourself doing it

if you struggle to let yourself really indulge in joy for joy's sake, one way to work your way through that is to start a practice of that documentation

i love to use pics for it. which is funny, because i used to HATE having my pic taken or peeping a pic i was in

(and i don't use that H word often or lightly)

but much though i avoided it at all costs, there was a part of me that didn't want to look the other way, who wanted to be happy to greet my own damn face in reflection

when i started my biz, i knew that avoidance of being in the shot would be a prob beyond the personal, so i worked on it

i started with a practice of taking pics of myself — just taking them. one here + there and then a bunch at once

then there was the intentional practice of getting comfortable looking at them

it was a recalibration in both mind + body, where i worked on the story around what it meant to be someone who took pictures of themselves, while also working on noticing + honoring the body sensations that came up as i did it, which allowed them to move through + evolve over time

(the pit in my stomach signaling fear of judgment, the constriction that came when i didn’t like what i saw, the flutter + warmth when i did)

getting to a place of peace that everyone looks great in some pics + trash in others (not just me)

soon the focus shifted to getting over the anxiety around posting some of the pics. at some point i was able to play

there's a kind of accountability when you get to the posting phase (while i generally do NOT get down with typical accountability measures, i love it on my own terms, like this)

i talk a lot about revolutionary acts — daring to trust yourself at least as much as everyone else, daring to claim joy like it's your job, daring to be so bold as to think well of yourself without apology

daring to take up space with your face, in pursuit of what you love

without apology

without giving a damn who might be threatened by the audacity or reminded of their own discomfort in doing the same

honestly, i started this email as a post on IG, so that my NEXT post (a word graphic) wouldn't land right next to another word graphic on the grid

but the message was clearly ready to send

and so goes the life of a passion-powered creative driven by intuition + self-expression

if anything here spoke true to you, please let me know! though we don't need validation, it can help to reinforce those intuition-driven choices

xxoo, cc

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