A friend told me (diplomatically) that she admired my frantic ways, but she needed to move at a slower, more deliberate pace, with fewer people involved (meaning she had no intention of blogging her plans). We were on the subject because we’d been toying with a collaborative project and she had concerns about our different approaches. We decided to table the idea for the time being, but it got me thinking about how different we all are and how, despite what the experts might have you believe, there isn’t one right way to be.

Some of us want to play big, do more, commit to crazy deadlines so we know we’ll do the work. Others want to slow the hell down, breathe, focus on one major project at a time. Some of us are a little uncomfortable with stillness, while others are learning how to listen to it, lean into it, get quiet. And realistically, we’re probably all shifting between the two extremes all the time.

I’m going to write more posts on this because it interests me and because I think that all too often our stresses about pacing come less from ourselves than from our perception that others expect us to do more or less than we’re doing. We’re urged to think big, to take risks, to put our work out there and not let perfection be the enemy of done. But we’re also urged to take our time, be mindful, get quiet enough to hear our inner voice, focus on the journey. The truth is, whatever we feel we need to do for the sake of our careers or sanity, there’s always (a hugely successful, admirable) someone advising us to do the opposite.

It’s stressful. Or can be. Especially when you’re stretching yourself, trying a new art form, starting a new project or business or relationship. Figuring out what your most comfortable, optimal pace is feels critical to me. And powerful. And worthy of exploration in future posts.

In the meantime, I want to share a cool pacing trick I learned a few weeks ago during a conversation with my friend, Annika Martins (who is, conveniently, a kickass life-business coach). I was telling her that while I thrive on being busy, juggling multiple projects with multiple deadlines and having always a little more to do than feels manageable, I do periodically hit a wall. Overwhelm becomes panic, panic becomes burnout. I was asking her about time off, how often she thought I should take it, whether unplugging for a week each quarter seemed like too much to her, and she said, “I think you should take time off every day.”

I laughed. She wasn’t kidding.

She said I should set aside time every day that is absolutely just for me. “It might be 5 minutes or it might be 4 hours, but however long or short it is, that time is for you to fill however you want to.” I asked her, “What if I want to fill that time with work?” and she said, “The only rule is that it has to be a conscious decision, driven by nothing other than what you most want to do right now.” (Translation: I see your resistance, j, and I raise you my totally rational, inarguable logic.)

So I did it. That day, I read Yoga Journal for twenty minutes. The next day, I wrote about my childhood. The one after that, I planted padron pepper seeds in the backyard. Every day, I’ve done something in a block of time that is just for me, and I feel better, more grounded, less frustrated and, oddly, more productive.

I don’t think the important thing is how I fill the time, it’s how I go into it – fully conscious that it’s mine, that for 5 minutes, or 20 minutes, or an hour, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, no justification necessary.

It’s a tiny thing, really. So tiny and simple that I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it on my own before this, but I didn’t. I wanted to share it in case you hadn’t thought of it either.

Got thoughts on pacing? A suggestion for my daily block of j-time? Sanity-saving tricks of your own? I’d love to hear them.

In December, 2010, I write an email to my friend. I tell him I have this crazy idea: a year-long project during which I will consciously, unabashedly dedicate myself to spreading love. I tell him all about the coffee shop text, the way it affected me, how it stayed with me for days. I tell him how kindness begets kindness, love begets love. I tell him, damn it, the world needs more kindness and love, and I don’t care if I sound like a song lyric.

(I am lying. I do care. Half of me is alive and humming with the possibility of launching a big, ridiculously hopeful year-long project… the other half is embarrassed by my own enthusiasm. I compensate for my inner dissonance by typing faster.)

I tell my friend that the world is too full of cynicism and snark, and that I can’t imagine a more worthy use of my time and energy than to spend one year actively attempting to counterbalance the ugliness. It’ll be my act of rebellion, I say, my stab at something truly beautiful in the face of the world’s unbelievable cruelty, its violence, intolerance and raging indifference.

And that’s when the cynic inside me saunters out of the shadows of my reptilian brain function and up into my frontal lobes like she owns the place. “Really, j?” she says, her voice dripping disdain. “A love project? How… adorable.”

I stop writing. I stare at the screen, at my blinking cursor, my exuberant note (typed at lightning speed in the hopes of outrunning the very voice that’s addressing me now), and I imagine my friend reading my words, the smile spreading across his face, the shake of his head, the (affectionate) roll of his eyes.

In that moment, my face burns. I feel intensely sappy, embarrassingly earnest. My finger hovers over the X that will make my message – and this whole big, beautiful, ridiculous idea – disappear.

~ From The Fearless Love Essays (which will be available in June if it kills me!)

~~~~~

Last week, in a piece for Fear Of Writing titled “Getting Personal,” I talked about why I’ve felt myself more and more drawn to “the fearlessness of writers telling their own stories, as openly, as honestly, as nakedly as they know how,” and why I decided to write The Love Essays. If you haven’t stopped by, please do. Corny as it sounds, I’m sentimental about sharing the piece with you… the Love Project started right here, after all, with you guys urging me on.

~~~~~

Recently, I read a collection of essays by a young writer named Chloe Caldwell. Her work is fearless and tender and arresting, and as I read her book, Legs Get Led Astray, I wondered how different my life would be if I’d dived into writing when it first tugged me, way back in elementary school, instead of decades later, in my thirties, when I returned to college and found my feeble, barely beating writer’s heart in a creative writing class. I can’t imagine where Chloe will be at my age, many years (and hopefully many books) from now, but she infuses me with hope when I read her words… hope for girls, for young artists, for brave-head-on-unfiltered-straight-through-the-heart love.

I interviewed Chloe for Used Furniture Review and she was just as bold and quirky and wonderful as I thought she’d be. I hope you’ll go read us.

~~~~~

I keep meeting cool people on Facebook. If we haven’t met there, we should.
xo

]]> http://zebrasounds.net/2012/05/10/the-whole-big-beautiful-ridiculous-idea/feed/ 17 judy http://zebrasounds.net/2012/05/03/the-ais-trick-that-inspiring-moment-of-abject-horror-and-the-best-thing-to-do-with-duct-tape/ http://zebrasounds.net/2012/05/03/the-ais-trick-that-inspiring-moment-of-abject-horror-and-the-best-thing-to-do-with-duct-tape/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 07:01:30 +0000 j http://zebrasounds.net/?p=10567 Continue reading →]]> I’m starting something new here, and I’m really excited about it. It’s called The Creativity Questions and my idea is this: I will periodically hypnotize invite kickass creatives (writers, musicians, artists, photographers) to answer five questions about the decidedly tawdry mating habits of fruit bats creativity. The questions will always be the same, but the answers, of course, will be different every time (and fun and funny and insightful and honest).

My first victim interviewee is short story author, novelist, and award-winning poet, Annie Neugebauer (@AnnieNeugebauer). Annie has work appearing or forthcoming in over two dozen venues, including The Spirit of Poe, Underneath the Juniper Tree, the British Fantasy Society journal Dark Horizons, and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies’ prize anthology Encore. She’s also a member of the Horror Writers Association, vice president of the Denton Poets’ Assembly, and president of the North Branch Writers’ Critique Group. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com for blogs, creative works, free organizational tools for writers, and more.

(Editor’s note: Annie is also wicked smart and very funny. Wait ’till you see.)

~~~~~

j: Life is demanding. What are your tricks for getting into a creative space?

Annie: At the risk of taking every last drop of romance out of writing, I am a big proponent (and pretty strict adherent) of daily word count goals. To borrow a phrase from the TV show “Everybody Loves Raymond,” I practice AIS – Ass In Seat – every single workday, five days a week.

That probably isn’t what you were hoping for, is it? But honestly, that really is my best trick for getting into the mood to create. I firmly believe that creativity is a muscle, and like any other muscle, it gets bigger and stronger with use, just like cardiac endurance. The more regularly you jog, the easier it is to jog the next time – and the further you can go. If you sit around waiting for the mood to go running to hit you, you might only do it once every few weeks. But if you make it a regular occurrence, committing to run whether you feel like it or not, you might just find that once you start, you get in the mood.

My point is that I don’t sit around and wait to feel creative. A muse – whether you believe in the concept of divine inspiration or just think it’s a cute way to describe your own brain function – can be trained to make a regular appearance. Some days I don’t think she’ll show up, but you’ll still find me AIS, typing away. Because even if I don’t *think* I feel creative, something unexpected might come out. What if I never sit down and try? This way, my “muse” knows where to meet me: at my desk, every single day, AIS.

j: What’s the weirdest thing that inspires you?

Annie: Well, when people hear I’m a poet and literary fiction writer, I think most of them probably assume I’m inspired by long walks in the woods, passionate lovemaking, the soft fur of a kitten’s belly, and global injustices. And don’t get me wrong; sometimes I do get inspired by those things.

But I’m also a horror writer. (Yes, even horror poetry.) And by far the weirdest thing that gets my creativity cranking is good old-fashioned terror. You know that moment when you’re alone in your house because your spouse or roommate is gone and you’re getting ready for bed? That strange sort of eeriness that you try to pretend you don’t notice? And you shut the bedroom door behind you so no one can come in after you, which is silly, but you tell yourself that’s not why you did it. But then you have to close your eyes to bend over the sink and wash your face. And there’s one moment, right after you stand up and towel off, when you open your eyes and look in the mirror and are almost sure someone will be standing right behind you.

That’s the moment I hope for. That feeling, like waking up from a nightmare, must be the weirdest thing that inspires me.

j: How do you deal with critics?

Annie: Two words: Voodoo dolls.

Just kidding. (Kind of.) In reality, I surround myself with supportive people. I regularly receive feedback, but I think learning to deal with critique is a whole different ballgame than learning to deal with criticism. Critique is invited and helpful, whereas criticism is uninvited and hurtful. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone criticize my actual work (at least not right to my face), although I do sometimes get snide remarks about my career choice. I’ve found, though, that people will generally use your own evaluation of yourself to guide theirs. So once I learned how to be confident and take pride in what I do, people began treating me accordingly.

The only outward critics I can think of are rejections. And although rejection is a necessary part of every writer’s life, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Rejections hurt like hell! What I’ve learned to do, though, is to see rejections as hierarchical instead of binary. A “no” isn’t just a “no.” It’s a sign-post telling me how close I am to acceptance. A form rejection might mean a project needs a lot of work. A personalized rejection might mean it only needs to find a more suitable home. And a personal note with recommendations and/or an explanation means I’m almost there. In short, I think of rejections as progress meters for my work, not an indication of personal value.

And when I feel down, I try to remind myself this: the fact that I’m getting rejections at all means that I’m actively putting myself out there, which is something to be proud of.

j: What energizes you, solitude or engagement?

Annie: Solitude, definitely. I’m one of those people who no matter how much fun I’m having or how much I love the people I’m with, I breathe a sigh of relief when they’re gone. Being alone too much probably isn’t good for anybody, but I also don’t think being constantly active and surrounded by other people’s energy is good either. Balance is important, and different for every person, but in general, I find myself more refreshed after a weekend of easy solitude than by a weekend of exciting activity. Both are great, but solitude has power. When there’s no one else there to make you think, you think about what’s really on your mind, and that leads to ideas and inspiration. I believe many people don’t spend enough time alone in a dark, quiet place.

j: Glitter, trash, and an endless supply of duct tape: What will you make?

Annie: I’m imagining some sort of industrial cat tower made of those empty carpet tubes and discarded pieces of scrap wood, duct-taped with the sticky side facing out and covered in glitter. Maybe then I’d eventually have sparkly cats. And really, at that point, I’d pretty much have achieved everything I’ve ever wanted out of life.

I absolutely ADORE the idea of doing something in grand fashion. What would my day look like if I expected things to happen in a grand fashion? Or if I took steps to make them that way?
~ Havi Brooks, The Fluent Self

~~~~~

In the midst of some really exciting things, some of which will be unveiled here soon (in grand fashion, of course). Stay tuned!

In the meantime, feel free to tell me about your grand thing. Bonus points if it involves cheesecake, wine or a baby hedgehog.

(Or you can just say hi. I like that too.)

xo

Love…

A poem…

A painting…

A promise…

A beautiful love-filled mess…

A donkey…

A piece of art…

A moment…

A wish…

A memory…

Somebody’s whole damn day….
jjj

What will you make today?

jcw

All three are on my mind now too, so rather than tease one out and shape it into a post, let’s talk about all three. I think they’re related anyway, the undercurrents of a creative life.

… On perfectionism

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and on my way to the bathroom, I thought this: the Love Essays don’t have to be perfect, they have to be honest; they have to be true. It was a reassuring thought, but I had to let it to go because waking up in the middle of the night is a dicey proposition for me. If I let my brain get started on even the tiniest of things, there’s a good chance I won’t be able to coax it back to sleep. Thinking about all the times when my desire to write something dazzling and masterful has prevented me from writing anything at all is a sure way to be up all night.

I was able to go back to sleep by telling myself I didn’t need to write a post on the dangers of perfectionism. I could just show you Robin Black’s piece, “Writer’s Block: On The Persistence of Demons” because it’s all about the stultifying effects of wanting to write (be, live) perfect.

… On getting naked

In writing the Love Essays, I’m attempting a literary nakedness that is new to me. It’s not that I’ve never dug deep before; I have. But it’s different pouring myself into a fictional piece. Writing fiction is like dancing naked… but doing it under all my clothes so only I know. Writing openly about my own experiences… that’s more like pole dancing in a strip joint under a white-hot spotlight.

In her inspiring post for Writer Unboxed, author Robin LaFevers says:

In order to take our writing to the next level we must embrace our strange, unique, and often embarrassing selves and write about the things that really matter to us. We need to be willing to peel our own layers back until we reach that tender, raw, voiceless place—the place where our crunchiest stories come from.

I think that’s right. I spend a lot of time feeling jagged and uncertain these days, wondering as I write what to put in, what to leave out, certain I’ve nailed it one minute and then just as certain the next that I’ve fallen short. I think that’s okay. I think that’s how it feels to be in the “tender, raw, voiceless place.”

… On handling criticism

Here’s the thing about “the next level.” It’s scary. That’s why it’s called “the next level.” If it weren’t scary and challenging and occasionally nauseating, we’d call it something innocuous like, “right over there” or “just over yonder.” Let’s face it, taking your art (work, relationship, life) “just over yonder” is way less frightening than taking it to “the next level.”

The next level is scary and, by definition, unfamiliar. So when you get criticized there, told that you’re doing it wrong or that you are (as your demons have said) not good enough, it’s tempting to want to jump back to the level you know. But don’t. It’s not about your critics. It’s not about what other people think you should or shouldn’t do. It’s about you and your own unquestionable, unstoppable, dogged evolution… that especially crunchy story only you can tell.

(It’s true that I wrote that last part for me, but I’m leaving it in just in case you need to be reminded too. And if you’re feeling stung by a critic or critics, read this from Tara Sophia Mohr about the nature of feedback; it’ll make you feel better.)

But sweating the actual words is what I do all day. I love words. My reverence for the power (the music, the magic) of language knows no bounds. True or not, I feel defensive when people say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

And anyway, I reasoned (social network newbie that I was), how hard could it be for a writer to make herself understood? I’ll be fine. Just me and my very precise, very selective, very graceful (famous last) words.

http://goodwizz.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-emoticons-and-smileys.html

x

My journey to the dark side was slow and reluctant. It took a few years and more than a few misunderstandings – not just with messages I’d written but also with messages I received. I once got a stinging tweet from a friend to which I responded with an earnest, heartfelt, overly long email trying to understand where his anger came from. He wrote back, “Oops. Forgot the smiley. Read it again with a smiley at the end.”

I did. It changed everything.

Not long after that, I had a similar situation in reverse. This time I was the tweeter, and the feelings hurt were someone else’s. I too asked the offended party to read the tweet again with a smiley at the end. She did, and she said okay, but our online relationship has never felt the same.

That incident was the beginning of my slide. I realized it was more important for me to properly communicate tone than stay strident on the question of emoticon usage. In the end, people’s feelings are worth more than my delicate writer’s ego, and humor – especially subversive or satirical humor – is hard to nail in writing. I may wish it were otherwise, but I’ve had to face facts: I’m no David Sedaris. In twitter-length communication, without benefit of my actual, real-life smile (tone of voice, posture, unwavering willingness to resort to slapstick), I’m much more likely to be misunderstood.

I wouldn’t call myself an emoticon advocate, but these days, when in doubt, I :).

How about you?

~~~~~~~~~~

I’m taking a break next week to grab some necessary downtime. I’ll be writing, and reading, and writing, and hiking, and writing, and planting, and then writing some more. I’ll be posting something special over at A Human Thing this Monday, and I’ll meet you back here on April 12th.

In the meantime, I just want to say that you guys totally rock. Thank you for all you give me… it is more than you can possibly know.

xox

I hadn’t originally worried about that. I thought I was writing a sort of guide, a “here are the lessons I learned” summary, in which I would expand on the ideas I’d expressed already in blog posts. But as soon as I started doing the actual writing, I knew it couldn’t be a guide for two reasons.

First, I’m no guru. Learning how to be fearless in love was and is an ongoing process. There are times when I truly do amaze myself with my willingness to be vulnerable and present and open and brave, but most of the time, I’m just stumbling along the path like everyone else , determined to stay the course, determined not to retreat. The truth is, I spend an awful lot of time trying to find my way back after I’ve wandered spectacularly off course.

Second, the real shit, the most important things I’ve learned, happened behind the scenes of the love project. The project first nudged, then flung, me into new territory, and that’s where the real learning happened; where the most necessary, elemental shifts in my heart and life took place. As soon as I started writing the essays, I knew that if I wanted to talk about fearless love honestly, I had to go there, ready or not.

*****

There is a big, ongoing discussion in the literary world about truth in nonfiction, and it fascinates me. I’m not really talking about the Mike Daisey “is it reporting or is it theater” question, though that is interesting to me too. I’m talking about the more personal concerns of memoir, the kind of stuff that Sari Botton gets at in her regular Rumpus column, “Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me.”

She talks to literary nonfiction writers about truth, boundaries, the dangers of writing about real people, the vulnerability and fear inherent to writing yourself faithfully onto the page. I love the honesty in these interviews, from both Sari (who often crouches her questions within the context of her own difficulties) and the authors she talks to.

In her interview with Stephen Elliot (Rumpus founder and author of The Adderall Diaries), Stephen talks about how very different two versions of the same story might sound. He says both versions can be true because “true” is such a liquid thing.

In our most personal stories, which so often intersect wildly with other people’s personal stories, I think that may be right. And unnerving.

In her Powells Books blog post, “The Thinnest Possible Screen,” Cheryl Strayed writes:

The beautiful thing about memoir is also the thing that makes it the most appalling: It’s actually you on the page. And not just you, but you on a literary teeter totter that asks you to carefully balance the weight of fearless self-revelation against the wisdom of graceful omission, of the factual and actual against the loosey goosey art of spinning a good yarn, of the difference between what those you write about would say about themselves against what you have to say about them, of what you can verify and what you are pretty sure you remember from a decade ago, of what really happened against the experience that’s inevitably altered and informed by your own very particular consciousness.

*****

These questions of honesty, truth, fearless revelation and art matter to me. They always have, but especially now, when what I feel is a need to honor the year that I’ve been through, while at the same time dig deeper into it through my writing. I want to be truthful about my own experience and respect the privacy of the people who were there with me. I’m not writing a memoir. I don’t know how many people will want to read the essays when I’m through, but it’s important to me that I get them right, that my decisions about what to put in and what to leave out are based on love and respect, not fear.

In many ways, this is new territory for me, this nakedness on the page. But maybe in the most essential ways, it’s what I’ve always done, what most artists do, I guess. Our journeys start with the doing (the living, the loving, the aching, the joy), and end when we attempt to make sense of it with our art.

Then, if we’re lucky, it starts all over again when what we create resonates with others and we are pulled back into the physical world, back to the doing (living, loving, aching, joyful) part again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In case you missed it, I interviewed the crazy-talented and very generous Cheryl Strayed for Used Furniture Reivew. We talked about these questions of truth, but also motherhood and love and wildness and Sugar and her favorite books and what she’s reading now. Go, read the interview, and then her memoir, WILD, which is brave and inspiring, and the first book in a long time that I couldn’t put down.

It’s there to remind me that talk really is cheap, that getting where I want to be takes movement, being who I want to be takes action.

Yesterday, working on the (fearless) love essays, venturing into powerfully emotional, uncharted territory in myself, I kept forgetting about the details of the day. I was late to pick up The Boy (twice), late to make dinner, late to go to bed.  I forgot to return a phone call and a number of emails. I left most of my to-do list undone. I forgot today was a post day here on ZS.

On the other hand…

x
I believe I’m capable of creative badassery.

I believe love changes everything.

I believe the people who love you love your passion
even (especially) when it rules the day.

I believe words (like sticks and stones) can hurt me…
and heal and connect and transform me.

I believe we make time
for the things that truly matter to us,
which is why Sister Helen Prejean’s quote is so amazing,
so simple and scary and sharp
and true.

What do you believe; what will you DO today?

I felt awful. Inadequate. Less than human. So I ate. A lot. Then I’d feel worse. So I’d eat more. Then I starved myself. Attempted to throw up when I did eat. I punched and punished my body. I HATED it.

The quote above is from Allyssa Marie Milan’s piece, “One body’s journey: Removing the poison, growing through pain,” which I read Monday on Roots of She and have been thinking about ever since. In her post (which you should read), Allyssa tells about the cruelty she’s endured because of her size – insults yelled from cars; trash hurled at her on the bus, at the lunch table, in the classroom; sneers and snickers from the clerks in clothing stores.

She tells about an incident when she was fifteen, four older teenagers in a jeep, slowing down to tell her she’s way too fat to be wearing a skirt. I read that and for a minute I was so angry I had to stop. In the pause, I imagined Allyssa – or maybe it was half memory, myself at fifteen – humming inside, alive and reckless and wide open… and oh so easily crushed.

~~~~~

I keep thinking about how narrow our definition of physical beauty is, how in our obsession with a crazy sort of body math, we consider the ratio of hips to waist to chest, the proportionate length of arms and legs, cup size independent of everything else. We miss the more complicated geometry of necks and shoulders and elbows and chins, the astonishing mechanics of wrists and ankles, the disarming logic of certain smiles.

I don’t know how easily we can change what we’re attracted to, but I know our brains are malleable. I know an old brain can learn new tricks, and so we can begin by teaching our brains to tap into our hearts when we gaze out at the world.

~~~~~~

I wasn’t fifteen. I was nineteen. That’s when I began starving myself.

In the morning, I would buy myself a bran muffin, bring it to my desk, and cut it into eight pie-shaped pieces. It was the only thing I allowed myself to eat all day, so I spread it out, a piece every few hours. The goal was to have pieces left over. The more pieces I threw away at the end of the day, the bigger my internal gold star. Sometimes, I threw all eight pieces away,  and on those days, despite the raging fatigue and headaches and chronic stomach pain, I felt happy.

Sometimes, self-preservation would kick in and I’d cook myself a meal. Rice or soup, lettuce inside a tortilla. Occasionally, I’d keep the meal down, but not usually. Usually, overcome with guilt, I’d force myself to vomit it back up, most of it undigested. I cried through the whole process – making the meal, eating it, vomiting it out. I cried as I hurried back onto the scale to see what damage I’d done.

This went on for almost two years, until finally I got sick and went to a doctor and he told me I had an ulcer. He explained to me that our stomachs produce acids, especially when we’re under stress. If we eat, the food in our stomachs gives the acid something to break down. If we don’t, the acid goes to work on our stomach walls. (Or at least that’s how I remember him explaining it to me.)

“Do you eat?” he asked me, suspiciously.

“Of course, I eat,” I said, and then I went home and cried because I knew I was out of control. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of food as anything other than the enemy. I already knew I was fat. Now I was sick, and part of the cure was to eat.

I was five foot six and 100 pounds.

As it turned out, that was the first step of my recovery, though it would take many years and many setbacks and many interventions for me to get to a healthy place. Even now I struggle with dangerous impulses. When I feel overwhelmed or scared, my first instinct is to stop eating. My second, and the one that always wins now, is to work through it on the mat or on the trail or with my friends or with my family. I ground myself in the physicality of my world.

~~~~~~

I regret the years I spent trapped in that place, hating my body, my appetites, my life, trying to – quite literally – be smaller, be less than. Reading Allyssa’s story, I felt such love and admiration for her. Such recognition and gratitude. I know it was a scary post to write, just as I know there will be people who read her and feel less alone. Less afraid.

I think there is power in sharing our stories, in letting each other in, in being vulnerable and broken open the way that I was when I read Allyssa’s words. I think this is how our notions about beauty and love and strength and vulnerability get changed. By sharing. By giving each other permission to be confused and imperfect. By telling each other again and again that it’s our imperfections that make us interesting… and, yes, beautiful.

What do you think?