Looks

“The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” ~ Maya Angelou's words spark a shift, a rearrangement of thoughts, a retraining of the gaze to hold everything in compassion, so the inner flame is not extinguished, but brighter in its blaze.

***

“I’ll tell you something,” she announces as she finishes brushing my hair, “you won’t ever have to worry about your looks.”

My looks?

I stand to gaze at my nine-year-old reflection in the antique mirror in the front hall. My platinum blonde hair has been swept up away from my face with ribbons and clips. Instead of a quick glance to check out the new hairdo, I linger and stare.

This is the first time I seriously contemplate my looks. Before this moment, my childhood mind had been free from fretting about cuteness and beauty. I roamed in a rich world of imagination and invested a spirited interest in my outfits in the same manner an actress would delight in her costume for a play – an opportunity to enliven another form of self, shifting into character roles to amplify and indulge vibrant feelings.   

Now, I look in the mirror keenly conscious of my physical appearance. 

Should I be worried about my looks? 

Instead of receiving my grandmother’s words as comforting and affirming, I perceive them as a warning. An insecurity quietly emerges from a fresh implant of fear. An anxious watching replaces my once serene inner gaze. 

This is the exact moment where I am imprinted. A generational insecurity over appearance has literally been combed into my inner dialogue, and this morning, close to two decades later, this critical voice booms and throws a terrific tantrum.

I stare into a different antique mirror now – one that easily reveals my perceived flaws – and wide-eyed, I take in the latest complexion wreckage. I’m burdened with blame and want to dislodge by pointing an accusatory finger to this damn summer heat, the misleading health blog, the ill-informed skin specialist, but in truth, I blame myself. 

I’ve been too aggressive with my sensitive skin. My skin is something I’ve struggled to feel comfortable in, and this quest for a perfect complexion has only resulted in additional upheavals and irritated unrest. 

My skin is crying, literally crying in small bumps on my forehead. These bumps are almost undetectable, but to me, they blare my inadequacies. I caused them. I scrubbed my complexion too hard because I read up on an exfoliation technique, put it quickly into practice and over did it.

The fact that my actions initiated this flare up makes me cringe, and I want to sneak back under the covers and hide.

This is not an option, though, especially today, because I am teaching yoga at an alumni event.

Today over eighty mamas and their littles will be gathering for a breakfast reunion. All summer, I’ve watched my coworkers passionately work to orchestrate this event. They have digged through dusty program files to gather former graduates’ contact information, made countless phone calls, and sent out stacks of invitations with (fingers crossed) to the right address in the hopes to reconnect and establish an alumni network. 

My coworkers were even gracious enough to include yoga on the event's agenda because they know how much I’ve missed teaching. I’m enthusiastically pumped to teach, but in my vision of me teaching, I didn’t have this spotty, dried out complexion.

The fact that I am teaching, publically speaking in front of a crowd with my current skin condition heightens my self-consciousness. The me reflected in the mirror does not begin to match this perfect standard I hold and strive to meet for myself.

My internal harsh criticism and insecurities threaten to steal this morning from me. Self-sabotage blocks me from openheartedly living and receiving this moment of my life, and this terrifies me.

I am not awake in my life. I have succumbed to a hurricane of thoughts. I have given this fear circulating around my looks permission to whip away my power. I could sabotage the entire morning and miss being present in this opportunity to share a yoga practice with radiant and resilient women and families. 

I know myself this well. I am capable of self-sabotage, because there’s a self-loathing slither of my ego that protests against happiness, success, joy.

I’m faced with all sides of myself in that mirror, and a choice on how to proceed into the day: either accept the situation, my complexion as it is, or continue fighting the reality, fighting the present me.

I choose to accept.

I choose to breathe.

I return to my yoga practice that will provide me the tools to teach.

I come home to the breath. I feel the expansion of the inhalations, and the gradual dissolution of the exhalations.

I breathe and I remember my power, my life-force, my power source.

I practice presence to embody the moment, receive and reside in my power, which comes from being awake in the here and now. 

I actively confront the mistruth that equates my looks with worthiness, and do so again and again by coming home to the breath, returning to what is real right here and right now – noticing sights, feeling textures, listening to sounds, feeling the ebb and flow of sensations and accepting it all as it is.

This is how I come to stand and teach in a circle of lively and lovely mothers and their children. 

Together, we rise into trees. We launch into warriors. We stretch out our arms like rays of sun. 

I am effervescently present. Thoughts about my dotted forehead and dried up complexion have been exhaled away so my sight is fresh and vibrant to truly see this scene of amazing women breathing mindfully with infants in their arms or a preschooler balancing in tree.

Afterward, I don’t rush to the bathroom down the hall to check on my complexion and if my makeup has stayed in place. I let myself be seen in all my imperfections.  

I practice receiving the wave of appreciation arising afterward, talking to mamas, and to my coworkers who beam at me, this is a side of myself that they have not seen, and it’s good to be seen and applauded for doing something that I love.

Later, I do get a glimpse of myself in the mirror – my hair is pulled up in a high, bouncy ponytail, my eyes shine bright, and before the critic snips, I accept and approve.

I accept that this is one of my struggles. I stop warring with the fact that there’s a nine-year-old who hungers for approval and soothing confirmation that I am lovable as I am. 

Perhaps it’s this Mercury Retrograde sweeping up the insecurities to the surface, or the brewing hurricane bringing it all out to the front, but whatever force at work, I decide to be grateful for those blemishes popping up and letting me know there’s still work to be done in terms of acceptance and healing self-care.

Accepting the person I am heals and restores me to my power, to reclaiming and blazing in my capabilities, and stepping into that blaze is uncomfortable.

“I’ll allow myself to be happy/successful/joyful when my looks are perfect.”

That’s the thought that keeps me running down a rabbit hole safely choosing narratives that diminish my shine rather than breathing into new challenging chapters of my life.

I chose to get caught up on my complexion before I taught because I was nervous to teach, and that’s all right. This is the ongoing lesson of learning and knowing the intricate fabric of our psyche, and illuminating the mental games that do not serve the fullness and vibrancy of our luminous being. 

The practice is catching ourselves before we chase ourselves down, before we water down our worth. The healing arrives in moment-to-moment wins of acceptance and allowing, and in the allowing there's an opening to receive the life dancing around me. This is the life I am actively manifesting, and one that I am innately worthy to being fully and powerfully engaged in.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I wink – at my nine-year-old self and the twenty-seven-year-old gazing back at me. Relax into the power of the present and shine. 

The Sadness, The Springs, and The Hound

Weekend mornings are for sunbathing, swimming, and reflecting at Barton Springs.

***

The toilet is clogged. I learn too late. In horrified screeches I beg and plead as the toilet revolt begins. Profanities trample the niceties as the polluted water surges over the rim, splattering cleaning supplies and toilet paper thoughtfully (well, thoughtfully until just now) placed behind the seat.

All tiredness from the early morning of travel evaporates into a shot of raging adrenaline. I boomerang around the possessed toilet, saving the bath mat, several rolls of toilet paper, and pushing the trash can back from the encroaching waters.

Cruel thoughts arise about the quickly departed house sitter who was tasked with caring for the garden (the flowers look like Texas road kill) and the dog (she’s happy and well-fed). 

“College student,” my neighbor rolls her eyes as she places dishes away. Her husband chuckles and ventures to the garage to find the requested plunger. I stand in their kitchen breathing in the sweet aroma left over from breakfast and want to drown my responsibilities in syrup.

Plunger in hand, I march back to the gurgling toilet. I slip off my bejeweled sandals and store them in a dry, safe spot in the hallway away from the miniature flood and face my opponent.

The feelings I had been mindfully suppressing since I stepped off the airplane and back into Austin have howled loose. I had explained to them in the taxi ride back to my new home that I would listen to them once I had a plate of breakfast tacos, preferably another cup of coffee and a journal so I could take diligent notes, become clear on the core reasons behind the feelings, and utilize the emotional charge to launch a fresh chapter here in Austin.

Instead, the feelings are unclogged to muster the energy needed to free up the toilet. The plumbing is set right. I’m left an emotional mess.

I blame the unexpected wave of grief on that irreverent clogged toilet. In fact, I blame the house sitter who dashed away before cleaning up the mess she made…or I’d like to blame her. I’d rather confront and tackle a plugged up plumbing system than the truths this sadness holds. I’m tempted to bury my feelings in busyness, and there’s an overwhelm of happenings in Austin that could prompt me to stay going and doing for weeks, but my energy is deflated. My energy retracts to the pain point, slowing steps, freezing purposeful action.

There’s no running, then. Only swimming.

I plunge into the sadness. I wade into the depths. I listen to the body, a body that is recovering from trauma, and this a truth that is hard for me to accept.

I tell my friend in Kentucky that I’m fine, that I’m happily energized actually! I wake up at 5:30am ready to go! She responds, “My Love, that’s not energy. That’s adrenaline.”

I’ve been existing in survival mode for two months, functioning in the reactivity of flight-freeze-fight. The toxicity from the stress releases once I am held in loving arms in Kentucky. The exhaustion catches me by surprise, but not to the ones who love me.

Adrenaline, my love.

I battle the sadness. I’m frustrated by its weighty, gloomy appearance. I restored and rejuvenated in Lexington, and the ease and brightened perspective dissipated into a burgeoning grief in the oppressive Texas heat.

I stop the resistance to what is real and present. I sit with the sadness and do so while watching Anthony Bourdain journey through Mississippi, Montana, Moscow. I crave his company. He’s soothing in his honesty, his heightened sensitivity to hypocrisy, nuances, bullshit, stories. I’m not a foodie, so I watch to listen and be fed by his writing, rich and rippling over scenes of cities and countries I cannot spark the energy to even light the desire to see, which signals that I am in the depths of grief.

I’m in mourning. And I let myself grieve.

I mourn the woman I was so close to becoming. I mourn a life in Austin I almost materialized. I grieve the love left behind in Lexington, and the opportunities in Austin left unseized because of deflated energy, a lack of crystalized clarity.

In the sadness, in the heat, in the fear that I am missing life, and life aches in its fleeting preciousness, I escape to the springs, to water bathed in morning light.

Barefoot on the pebbled-paved cement, I walk the length of the pool, crossing a bridge aligned with a fence and peer down into a small cascade of falls to see the dog swimming section of the springs. The poodles, the retrievers, the corgis flounce and paddle. The canines stand on rocks drying off with big, fluffy, fur blurring shakes, and are gleeful and grinning, I swear, they are grinning, especially the chocolate lab.

Out of this doggie paradise, I spot the hound swimming steadily through the tides. His noble head lifted above the bubbling streams of water, undeterred by the quickening strength of the current, he continues with purposeful paddles toward his owners awaiting him on the rocky shore. He emerges from the water with slow, measured steps. He is the embodiment of elegance, majesty, grace.

Watching his swim, his rise, I feel a sense of relief and the ease gradually deepens as I slip into the cool waters of the spring. I float on my back, gently kicking, and training my gaze on the city’s skyline filling the space in between the trees.

The city will unfold in time. The desperation and fear lessens. The experiences and the emotions are the invitations to deepen into myself. The sadness pulls me into the depths, into inner realms, testing my ability to feel without being consumed, to listen without judging, to collect the information and honor the wisdom of the body to initiate action when its ready. When there’s the healing, there will be the flow of energy to shape the next step. 

And hopefully that kick of energy won’t be needed to unclog a disgruntled toilet, but when life gets messy and chaotic, the image of that hound’s morning swim reappears. Steady and patient, working with the currents, and trusting that he will secure solid ground, one purposeful dog paddle at a time.