Instagram Re-home: Part One

As I prepared to break from social media, I felt waves of excitement. It felt like I was starting a whole new way of life and I am still becoming more and more excited to let this piece of life go for awhile.

I also feel waves of anxiety and grasping, as if deleting apps from my phone means deleting my memories from existence.

I began looking back at my digital life on Instagram. Some of the posts held words I needed to hear (again), lessons I could reflect on, and beautiful images of other countries, random days and the like. So, I re-homed a collection of my favorite posts to this mindful community space. My hope is that visitors can spend time here, truly reading and absorbing what resonates with them instead of scrolling to something new in a few short seconds.

Take a deep breath and see what brings you joy, inspiration or insight. No urgency to consume here :)

Digital minimalism has been a dream. Among the lessons I’ve taken in greatly reducing my social media, the most helpful was this:

With presence comes insight. With insight comes the ability to redesign our thinking. With that ability comes the phase in which we throw everything we’ve ever been told — about success, age, work and happiness — out the window. Then, we build it back from the inside 🔥🔥🔥😎

Chronological age: 40
Spiritual age: 28

See you out there ✌🏼

“I AM NOT SLOWING DOWN” I said.

“Yes, you are” the universe responded.

I told myself I’d already been through enough. I already took time, lots of time, to heal. I already sat around and “did nothing all day” while my world shifted around me. Divorce, the death of my father and rescue pup, losing my business just as it began being profitable, hospitalized with internal inflammation and bleeding from stress, a dark relationship, two moves, and more.

I made it out alive (barely). The season of painful shifts was over 😊🙏🏼

When I felt the return of my energy, I hit the ground running, as I do. I released my book, F*ckless, made big career decisions, started a creative project with a friend, started hiring, advanced press and book promotion efforts, completed my audio recording and went back to long runs and bike rides.

I was handed opportunity after opportunity, masked as hit after hit, to slow down. I’m best when I’m slow, even though I’m built to move quickly and efficiently. I’m smartest when I’m slow, even though I process and think well on my feet. I wrote “go slowly” on a page of really good advice I give others but sometimes fail to take.

This image was taken in my cardiologists office. I sat there, a healthy 40 year-old, receiving news my heart would need to be monitored. I got called back for a second mammogram after something ugly showed up, and now I see “biopsy” on the page of my calendar. Yada yada yada…

In a panicked moment waiting for my ultrasound, looking at a small circle on my breast X-ray, I stopped my thoughts.

I asked myself “From this perspective, how do you wish you were living your life?” My first thought was “well I’m getting another f*cking dog”, and I felt joy 🤩

I kept asking myself that question, and over and over again I answered:

Nature.
Quiet.
Peace.
Play.

So, I’m jumping off the grid. Like, REALLY off the grid — no wifi or cell service, for the next 6 days, at a @getawayhouse a few hours from home.

The universe finds ways to guide us to what we truly want, even if it’s a f*cked up road to get there 😎🙏🏼

As a young photographer living in DC, I fell into a consistent gig with an event planner. I got to photograph events at Folger’s Shakespeare Theater, the National Portrait Gallery, the Air and Space Museum, and countless other interesting places in the city. My credentials gave me access to full spaces, private rooms and — my favorite — the behind-the-scenes chaos of the kitchen.

I would refuse to eat whatever delicious thing I was given and instead spend my breaks on my own, exploring spaces and capturing people in motion.

While I believe in fully enjoying the present, I can’t help but look back at this time as the best of my life.

Whenever I become nostalgic and wistful about past seasons, friendships, jobs or memories, I take the opportunity to remember that we can cultivate pieces of the past in the present.

That time in my life was a time of ultimate freedom, hope and creativity. I made $400 per session and barely paid my bills, but I loved my job and the curious adventures I was gifted because of it. I left my unfulfilling, stable government job to start life as a photographer, and it was the most authentic choice I’ve ever made.

People questioned me at every turn, but I was in love. And love is blind :)

What have you loved so much that nothing else mattered? How can you bring a small piece of that to your life now?

Wishing you all a little crazy blind love today 😎✌🏼

My purpose mantra:
“To act with joy and light, so that others can envision and live what is possible.”

What I learned when I was developing this, and what I was finally able to root down in, was that I was built to challenge the way things are. Not from a place of negativity but from a place of almost utopian positivity.

I wasn’t built to be quiet and be happy with good enough.

I was built to ask “why?” and “what else?” and “how can it all be better?”

People that challenge a current reality are not negative souls or ungrateful for what they have, they can simply envision a more positive, impactful, exciting, effective or nourishing version of the current reality. During a TIME broadcast on hope this morning, an artist said:

“We have to be positive, we have to always be optimistic. There are enough people who see the negative.”

There is so much in this world that is Good Enough, because there has no doubt been some progress, as in racial divides or the women’s movement. But this progress, this Good Enough, is nowhere near the reality many of us know is possible. And while we know there will be hard times and great injustices and challenges that seem impossible, it does not mean we do not reach for our vision of more beautiful, more just, more equitable or more loving every day. It means we destroy the idea that we stop at good enough and walk away satisfied.

Today’s post is brought to you, for you, by anyone who has ever told you to “just be happy with the way things are”. You see more. So make it more. You can be both grateful and happy for what you have while also being a warrior for what isn’t... yet😉

I’m not truly certain when in life we’re told this story, but after starting a book on the subject I can say that most women are handed a belief that they are not to trust themselves. That they must be mistaken. That they are overreacting. That their intuition is wrong. That their choices or feelings are up for debate. And we give jurisdiction to others, however well-intentioned, to make decisions for us. The job to take, the city to live in, the people we choose.
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Even when we know a truth from a very real place, we second guess, rationalize or outright numb ourselves to a message that is loud and clear. I wonder what the world would be like if it were filled with women who believed that theirs is the only permission they need?

Stick to one thing. Choose one path.

Sound familiar?

Growing up I lived in my own dichotomy- I played soccer and danced ballet, I took art and piano but loved science camp. I roughhoused with neighbors but took solitude on my Thinking Rock where I would escape to write. I went to private school, then public. As I got older a nagging fear began to grow. I vacillated between gypsy soul and Type A overachiever- happily and then cautiously. I felt panicked, already feeling a strange future loss.

Little did I know this would last well into my 30’s. I became a photographer after years as a clinician. I desperately wanted to go to art school in Paris but stayed in conservative DC because it seemed more adult, less flaky. I backpacked through Southeast Asia after taking accelerated graduate courses, then turned in my hiking boots for heels as I felt almost shameful for strutting down M Street in Georgetown. I learned to avoid the confused but well-meaning, “NOW what are you doing?!” by trying to stick to choices that everyone felt comfortable with. I always told myself, “One day you will have to choose”.

I never did. Instead, I learned to know when to use my creative, Gypsy soul and my logical, ambitious sides to embrace the power of my own authenticity.

✨Reinvention and change is not doubt in who we are but faith in who we will become.✨

“Stay comfortable. Change is scary.” - Your Monkey Brain

There’s a strange line between bubble-wrapping our lives and taking big risks. While I’ve always thought myself to be a risk-taker, I find myself repeating stories around keeping comfortable these days, grasping for a life that remains undisrupted. Safe.

Whether or not this is a counter control response to the current restrictions on life, we all fight to keep comfortable at times. We’re designed that way. We fight risk, we fight experiences for which we don’t know the outcome. During the hard times it can seem exhausting to experience even small, simple changes. But when I heard this quote the other day, I felt my face morph into an amused smile:

“If the only constant is change, shouldn’t we be better at it?”

Today I am disrupting the story that there is a point in life where I will have “arrived”, where everything settles, risk is reckless and change is a thing of my youth. We never truly arrive, we are always traveling. And the best travel stories, in my experience, have always involved risk.

While changing landscapes and seasons bring fears and challenges, each too has its own potential for beauty. Don’t miss it.