Life is not a snapshot

My therapist once said to me, "Good gosh life is not just a single snapshot."  It's been many years since I sat on his worn couch and heard that statement.   Life is not just one picture where we look young and beautiful and all is perfect, glossy and photo shopped.  It's the whole thing.  It's the sickness, old age,  wrinkles, bodily fluids etc...  Life is the ups and downs together with the stuff in between. I see so many women clinging to youth.  All their time spent at the altar of youth making offerings to the glittering dept store counters regenerating, re lifting, anti this, and anti that.  But, if we were to look at the collage that is our life, would we want just one perfect picture or would we want to remember the days we persevered.  The days we sacrificed for another, the days we contorted with anger or washed with tears. Is it only the days we won that we would display?  Is there no meaning in the days we lost?   Maybe the best picture would be the day we discover that winning and losing is an illusion.  Maybe that initial spark of knowing would certainly be the picture we couldn't leave out of our collage.  I want all my pictures.  I want the good me along with the shadow me.  I don't want to simply peel away parts of me that aren't "pretty"  I will not be a splintered off hollow version of myself, over fussed, nipped and tucked continually gazing in the looking glass.  I want to celebrate my worn hands with large aged knuckles.   How I love the bony veined hands that have held my children, made endless dinners, marked each passing holiday hanging endless decorations and signing cards.

My challenge to my friends.  Find the one thing on your body you constantly cover, suck in, hide, criticize and let it out.  Say Hello.  Make friends with that side of you that just doesnt photograph well.  Take in all that "not the way its supposed to be" and just let it wash over you.  Don't fight it.  Don't keep it separate.  Welcome it into the whole.  For me, the winner has to be my pooch.  Disfigured cellulite jellpack---a testimony to each c section that welcomed a gorgeous child into my life.  Disfigured?  I think not.  Today, when I undress to shower,  I am going to admire it instead of hastily covering it with a towell.  What will you welcome back into your photos?

Two weeks ago, my Aunt died.  She was one of my "not the way its supposed to be, colors outside of the lines" sort of photos.  She was my Aunt Norene.  She looked like the New Mexico dessert, like the earth just jutted up and formed her worn leathery face with deep erosion lines.  She cussed like a sailor.  She drank beer every night.  I loved her with all my heart.  She had a crazy  farm  littered with strays, animals and misfits.  She was never afraid of "ugly" or "not right"    She was unpredictable and sometimes scary.  She was fair and honest mean and sharp.  She could cut you but never did.  She protected her family tooth and nail.  Her and her farm were dirty dusty and hot.  Yet, she could surprise you with little unexpected beauties.  On her farm was a peacock,  whose ostentatious beauty was just as out of place as she would have been on a fashion page.  I guess that peacock was her " unexpected photo. "  I was told my Aunt Norene was beautiful in her day but that a horribly abusive husband had tried to break her.  Perhaps that peacock was her way of thumbing her nose at what she couldn't comply with.  All of her photos were there to see--the good the bad and the ugly.  She seemed to move with the earth hiding nothing.  She could sew the most gorgeous jeweled gowns and formals with absolutely no patterns. She just created them.    I think she just never needed any patterns to imitate ----she had lived enough life to know the true origins of things so creation just wasn't that difficult for her.

She's my ugliest most beautiful picture in my life collage.  Do you have one of those pictures?

Aunt Noreen: Young and Beautiful