This month is Arts and Health month. Last year I celebrated with a daily blog post series called Art Heals. This year I'm honoring it more intimately. For my own well-being, and because it is what my mind-body-spirit-energy calls me to do.

Orienting, being, assessing, implementing soft shifts of love and devotion for the season of harvest, then retreat, then sprouting seeds.

I'm fitting in pockets of time, to see and feel into... my body, my being, my beloved, my truth.

I've been meaning to dip my feet into the waters of self-portraiture again for about a year and a half - see how it feels in this decade of my life.

So easy to do with a camera at my fingertips and a tube of old, gritty titanium white, on cold days with warm light cascading in on my napping family. I'm grateful for easy starts to long held intentions.

In the space of silent love, my mind quiets, and through my sense of self, I begin to see connections more clearly. It feels a bit like waking up.

Shared on Instagram a few days ago, with the image above: Over fifteen years ago, when I was in college, "selfies" required tripods and timers and chemistry and lots of waiting to see results. They were a crucial, creative complement to therapy for me, and the darkroom was where I loved to discover magic and story in the light. It was a way of seeing what I couldn't always feel or express - my truth, joy and pain, my questions and prayers. It was a way of helping my re-wired memory capture feelings in time I didn't want to forget to remember - messages to my future journey of relating. What a gift it is that we can so easily explore seeing ourselves in different lights, and the process of growing and expanding through our vision, captured in snippets of becoming, as changing women in this changing time.

sense of self ~ study

First Friday (vlog): discomfort in finding completion with our artwork

the place love shows up {new collective prayer painting}