Becoming the Beautiful Me
“Beauty is the illumination of your soul.” John O’Donohue
For many of us, both male and female, we live with our insecurities, in constant battle with keeping them locked away and safely sequestered. They sneak out periodically to remind us that they are there, to incite our discomfort and raise our anxiety. And then they seemingly, mischievously and elusively, create the perpetual space for us to feel we are less that the amazing individual we actually are. I am learning to live more mindfully with my insecurities. Inviting them to teach me what I need to learn and to join with them in partnership with the potential of creating a new dance. Perhaps, in time, we can even learn to sing in harmony.
The slow onset of my greatest insecurity also left a deep wound. It slipped into my psyche and became my reality, it then energetically entrenched itself in my physiology. The combination became an impediment to living fully. Firmly entrenched in the belief that I was not enough; I could not have been more wrong.
Becoming the Beautiful Me
For all those years, I thought of myself as unattractive, unworthy, loving but unlovable. Intelligent, professionally competent, sensitive, creative, interesting: but damaged goods, shielded from, and not worthy of, the potential joy of intimacy.
This journey has taken me so many places I never anticipated going and the personal growth astonishing. It challenged me to embody the ache of a tough struggle, stretching itself into new learning and the wonder of great discovery.
I was recently looking for some childhood photos, a particular leather-bound album. My sister did not know where it was, but she did have in her possession a box of organized family photos. In it I found a packet with my name on it. From childhood to adulthood, some of them I had not recollected seeing before. In going through them, I was astonished to find two photos taken in the spring of 1984. I did not know that they existed. One is of myself, and the other of myself, and the wonderful women surrounding me. I looked at the photos without sadness or remorse, they too are a part of the my journey. Grateful that they did not have distressing emotional charge, their timing was perfect. Along with them I found two others taken in the early 1980’s. They joined these first two with the intent of showing me what it is like, not only to return to self, but to discover a piece of oneself not yet known.
In my younger life I was aware that others had considered me pretty, attractive, sometimes sexy, or as my former spouse might say, “a looker”, but I never considered myself beautiful. As I gazed at that first photo, of myself in a dress handed down from my mother, I recognized, that for the first time in my life I saw myself as beautiful, not merely physically beautiful, but with a light that shone brightly. She has always been there, and now, I think I can truly begin to engage with sowing the seeds of her magnificence. I surprisingly said to my sister, “I really was beautiful.” She replied, “You were a homecoming queen, yes, of course you were beautiful.”
While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to be able to see oneself as beautiful, for the first time, is absolutely overwhelming. This is a piece of it, an experience evoking an emotion which is incredibly tender. So, I will simply let myself be beautiful. Memories, now gifted in photographs of the beauty of youth, in physical beauty still in the context and radiance of the wisdom years, internal beauty of a life well-lived, one full of learning and striving to walk as honorably as possible in integrity, the energetic beauty of an open heart reaching outward, and the true essence of who I am, carrying my own version of divine uniqueness into the future to share with the world; these aspects of beauty are now my reality. Not with a sense of conceit, self-absorption or egotistical perspective, but graciously accepted as my birthright. For as long as I have remaining on this earth, I hope to always remember that beauty begins on the inside, it must be lovingly nurtured there and tended as a garden, each of the seasons necessary for its growth. Reverence for it as a gift will help me keep it vibrant and healthy. This new-found awareness of being beautiful is part of healing too.
Disservice to that beautiful woman is a thing of the past. It is now time to treat her with respect. A journey beckoned. She stepped knowingly into vulnerability and transparency, doing so with fear and trepidation. She forged forward with tenacity into the unknown, fumbled, fought battles, faltered, made errors in judgment, questioned, listened for answers, accepted challenging discoveries, grew through pain and suffering, and along the way, experienced the full cycle of laughter, joy, grief, love and loss. She has emerged stronger, wiser, integrated and joyful in her own awakened authenticity. Shining brightly, there is an adventurous world awaiting her.
Like the times of long ago reflected in the photographs, remembrances of wounds remain. Potentially triggered still, and with a knowingness that there will likely be other wounds to come, that is simply what life holds. But these particular wounds of the past, have healed, the scars still barely delicate. With the hope that all who have experienced these tender places in themselves can, like me, find their own way to the beauty of who they truly are. I now rejoice by stepping into becoming the beautiful me.
