‘A Beautiful Body’ Exploring Vulnerability As A Collective Continues:  October Is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Three Years ago today, my son’s grandmother slipped into spirit world after a long battle with breast cancer.  I never knew Carol.  She became what the Universe is made of before her son and I met, before her grandson was born.  I have heard hundreds of stories from my beloved Alok about Grandma Carol.  She was witty.  She was stylish.  She was disarmingly charming and naturally positive.  She was wise.  She was authentic and beautiful.  She died in the arms of her son, my son’s father.  My beloved Alok and I like to talk about how Alok has held in his own hands a human who has passed into Spirit World and a human arriving From Spirit World into our Human Tribe, as he was my birth partner and cut the cord or our son nearly 8 months ago.

I wish Grandma Carol was here today.  I wish I could have photographed her, heard her stories of her living with cancer.  I would ask her why she choose to study India’s History and I would ask her if she would like a massage or if she would like to go for some gelatto.  I would watch her with love in my tear-filled eyes as she held my son and her grandson, Sequoia.  I would tell her she is so damn beautiful.

They say October is breast cancer awareness month.  Grandma Carol passed in October from breast cancer.  I recently photographed a Powerful and Brave Goddess for my project A Beautiful Body who was diagnosed with breast cancer after the birth of her son.  This is what she wrote to me before we set up the shoot which gave me chills all over my body:

“My son (now 5) was close to 10 pounds when he was (finally!) born.  I was 5’3 and skinny (up until my pregnancy).  After he was born, I was very, very depressed, in spite of myself, about my “ruined” stomach.  I wanted to love it, knew that I should, but I just didn’t recognize it as mine.

5 years after his birth, this past spring, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I was blessed with a visionary, organic surgeon —  (who knew that there was such a thing as an organic surgeon?) –who refilled the tissue he removed from my breast with that very same “extra” post-pregnancy abdominal tissue that I’d been cursing.  it wound up not only giving birth to my son, but also restoring the rest of me as well.

My stomach now (since that cancer surgery) doesn’t look like its postpartum self.  It is still swollen from this last operation )not from pregnancy), and it has a healing wide scar across it, no longer just the product of living and giving birth but obviously the product of big changes since then.  I no longer curse anything about my stomach, and am now very grateful for that giant scar and really for all of my scars.  I used to make films and take photos, and was very interested in themes similar to ‘Beautiful Body’.
good luck to you and thanks for being so brave”.
-G

Thank YOU, G, for being so damn BEAUTIFUL and so exquisitely brave.  You are my medicine.  You connect me to my son’s grandmother’s life that I never had the pleasure of knowing.  You are my definition of beautiful.

Photographs & Essays of American Mothers by Jade Beall

Redefining American Beauty To Help us Heal Old Stories.

She stood barefoot with a fresh pedicure showing blood-red toenails on the white paper backdrop in my downtown, air-conditioned Tucson studio.  She lifted her loose blouse over her head with shaky hands, tears welling in her honey colored eyes.  She was petrified.  Not only had she never shown a stranger her most vulnerable secrets that her clothing effortlessly hides, she had never been photographed nude.  She was determined despite her fear to help me shape a new definition of beautiful for herself and for countless other women in our culture.  She, like the hundreds of others who are coming together for my project ‘A Beautiful Body’ are my Super-{S}heros.  Together, we are creating a body of work that could be called nothing short of incredibly beautiful.

I have heard hundreds of stories now.  Anorexia, childhood bulemia, the mother told her she was too fat to be a ballerina, self-hatred, self-suffering.  Feeling unsexy because she perceived her nipples as imperfect, feeling unsexy because she lost too much weight after breast feeding.  Feeling like there was something deeply wrong with her because she only lost 5 pounds 9 months after the birth of her 2nd child.  Mourning the loss of her un-suckled breasts.  Sexual abuse, self-inflicted abuse, teenage and young adult drug addictions due to self loathing because she never felt beautiful;  breast cancer after the birth of a long awaited pregnancy, loss of a baby at birth with a wrinkly tummy to remind her everyday of what might have been.  There can be so many stories shadowing a woman in our culture.  We are, however, also incredible blessed with tremendous amounts of freedom and the ability to shape-shift concepts and ideas in our country.  We have the ability to feel worthy, to believe we are beautiful and to be a part of a community of people who wish to share beauty and joy in this world.

And then.

And then, if you are like me, you might indulge yourself in a professional pedicure a few times a year.  I walk into such a place overjoyed at the idea of 40 minutes to myself while someone makes my awkward dancing feet more pretty.  I sit down on the cushy-plasticy massage chair and dip my tired bare feet into the warm soothing water.  An unconscious, unnamed addiction causes me to hastily pick up a People Magazine and, with a zombie glazed-over stare, I (casually?) cautiously flip through the pages. But with each perfume-scented page, I feel increasingly more fat, seriously un-stylish with a need to compare myself to all the surrounding women including the generous soul scraping at my calluses.  Suddenly, I realize I have an oozing infection on a festering wound I was unaware I had on my previously healthy sense of self.  As I read about Who-Lost-All-Her-Baby-Fat-After-Birthing-Baby CreamPuff and Who-(gasp)-Was-Unable-To-Loose-Her-Baby-Fat and Who-Looks-Better-In-a-$30,000-Dress and Who’s-Divorced-Who I cannot help but feel small and powerless.  Thank goodness I only get a professional pedicure once in the proverbial blue moon.

It is in light of this that, three months ago, I knew I had to do this project, ‘A Beautiful Body,’ after writing and photographing a blog about my post-birth body. Only now is the the combination of my hard work and the courage of these timid and fierce women who have offered themselves and their stories that I am fully seeing the true magnificence this body of work holds for our culture of women and men.  I knew that untouched (what do you mean ‘untouched’?) nude photographs of American Mothers would be…  cool, maybe rebellious and possibly somewhat unprecedented.  I had no idea, however, that it would be so utterly breath-taking as it has begun to take shape.  It’s actually not until this very moment as I type these words, with my fussy 6-month-old baby nursing from my sensitive sore nipple and wringing the saggy flesh of my forearms, that I am beginning to understand this exhilarating feeling:  being vulnerable as a collective and wanting to shed pain and birth praise to authentic beauty. It is true for most of us, I’d say: we want to feel interconnected to each other while laying down the swords of name-calling and comparison.

The real buzz about my project, ‘A Beautiful Body’ started with this one photograph that I posted on Facebook:

In one month, I watched as my community of 500 followers on Facebook swelled to nearly 2,000.  This photograph was ‘liked’ over 3,200 times and shared 2,700 times within just a few weeks.  Thousands of emails began pouring in from all over the world.  And so even though I am-sleep deprived almost everyday caring for my baby boy Sequoia and have yet to secure funding, I humbly reply to the hundreds of story-rich emails while photographing as many as 10 courageous women a week.

I must confess, I am beginning to stretch thin. Saying mothers can multi-task, I now realize, is an understatement: In addition to this project and being a full-time-new mother, I am a massage therapist, a professional photographer, a dance teacher, co-founder of my dance/yoga/photography/events studio, as well as the co-founder of a budding sustainable clothing company called Fed by Threads that I run with my beloved, Alok.  All of these passions keep both he and I busy even in our dream-time, it seems.  Sometimes, I privately admit to playing out glorious daydreams of having a 9-5 job or being a stay-at-home mommy.  But each day, Alok and I rise with puffy eyes, I make us strong coffee and water the garden while he makes a delicious breakfast.  We then pile into the car with our baby boy and go to our studio to work on our dreams while Sequoia crawls around on the wood floor and listens to his echo bounce around the studio until he wails, the tell-tale whisper that he is hungry and needs my arms.

But guess what?  Even though I am puffy-eyed and think often of the softness of my pillow, those feelings are vastly outnumbered by the feelings of phenomenal excitement I have in producing this book. I wake up on my photo-shoot days with a smile on my face anticipating the women I will get to meet that day and what stories they might share with me, with us.   I wonder what sort of magic she and I will make out of the fear of revealing what our society craves to judge as less than.  I wonder how much beauty we will manifest together!

I am sharing with you a photo sampling of a few dozen courageous American Mothers (minus their essays).  These are not the final images that will appear in the book.  I hope they serve as a peep through the keyhole of our magical universe and hopefully inspire you to feel beautiful, just as you are, untouched, un-airbrushed.  Maybe you would like to join us too?  Maybe you too crave the redefining of our culture’s idea of beautiful?  There are so many stories and so much pain.  What many of us have forgotten, however, is that Pain is the twin sister to Joy.  Pain is one of the best sources of energy eagerly awaiting to be recycled into something magnificent: into Beauty.

Today, equal parts excited and nervous, I photographed my first post-birth mother for my project ‘A Beautiful Body’.  It was perfect that this project began with her, really.  She is fiercely beautiful and as tender as a newborn baby.  You would never know that under the thin layer of clothing that covers her body, she has the most gorgeous collection of stripes on her stomach and breasts in the formation of a sun from some undiscovered universe.  Elsewhere her skin is taught, bronzed and firm.  The tender place that she rarely exposes to anyone and remains protectively covered, like a woman beneath a burka or a mermaid under the sea, was silently revealed to me.  It was right then I realized that I have in fact finally redefined my definition of beauty.  Never have I seen anything more sexy than this body with is authentic story that has birthed and fed 2 perfect children.  I couldn’t help but daydream a little into the future, wondering what it will be like to explore hundreds of images like the ones I took today while reading each woman’s story about her relationship to her post-birth body.  It’s the medicine of being vulnerable and real that begs to be labeled ‘beautiful.’ It’s time, isn’t it?

When I myself stood up for the first time after ejecting, in one single push, a human out of my vagina, I truly understood what a Goddess must feel like.  Barefoot on the cold white tiles, my legs were shaky yet determined to hold up a belly that still looked 41 weeks pregnant.  I had just had 5 stitches sewn into my yoni, was wrapped in a makeshift paper-towel diaper, and in utter awe.  Tears began streaming down my face as I glanced down at the empty pouch where my son had been curled up inside of me just minutes earlier.  I closed my eyes and thanked my body like I had NEVER thanked her before.  It was as if I was telling a new lover for the first time “I Love You”, that completely blissful feeling of giddy tenderness for a new human in ones life.  I was in such admiration of what my body had just done and found myself speechless trying to explain how bad ass I thought she (I mean I) was.

I wonder if I should be honest with you.  I wonder if I still have it in me to go on being vulnerable and tell you that there are many days I find myself wondering if I should have become a Mother, that maybe my body doesn’t make the hormone for me to function on so little sleep.  I wonder if I should admit that there are times when facing the simplest of decisions paralyzes me: “Should I return the rented breast pump or go meet up with some other mamas?” My confusion could easily find me choosing instead to simply stare at my garden with nothing to say at all.  I wonder if I should confess that I have struggled, at times, to feel gratitude for the amazing life that I am fully aware that I have.  I wonder if I should admit all of this self-inflicted suffering and useless selfishness, and say it’s a major struggle to love this pudgy body?  I wonder if you could understand that even as all of these thoughts wash in and out of my mind like warm waves on a central Mexican beach, my son Sequoia has taught me unconditional love?  It is true.  I have been a preacher of unconditional love for a long time, sort of convincing myself each time I stepped into that pulpit.  But it is only now that I fully understand what it feels like to love another human unconditionally.  And now I can confess to you that I also catch glimpses of loving myself unconditionally.

Through it all, I will tell you this:  I am doing my best and everything is gonna be alright.

I have no illusion to look like the cheerleader I was in high school or even like the Ashtanga yogini of a couple years ago, with a figure that just might have received a stamp of approval from Vogue. What I don’t understand, however, is this inability to feel beautiful RIGHT NOW with this saggy belly and jelly-roll thighs. Why do I judge it?  I mean, I had body image issues way before Sequoia’s birth, so this is nothing new.  But it’s a fresh way to judge myself as something imperfect and label myself ugly.  Why do I compare myself to that amazing mother who gave birth 2 months ago and is training for a marathon??  Why do I have a need to feel like a sexy young thing after having accomplished one of the most phenomenal miracles of the human race and instead embrace simply being ME?  I birthed a HUMAN, for crying out loud!  Shouldn’t I still feel like a Super Hero Human Maker these few months later??  Who am I REALLY trying to impress?

I continue to remind myself that self-love is a practice like learning how to talk.  It takes time and dedication.  And I can begin the practice RIGHT NOW.  Why not?  ’Life isn’t short just a lot of people waste it.’  I refuse to waste my life.

What if we lived in a culture that praised a woman because she was a divine authentic being with a rhythmical beating heart and an non-replicable message to share with our world?  What if stretch marks and wrinkles and jiggly bellies and booties meant you were closer to The Divine?  What if we celebrated each-other because without you there is no me?  What if we truly believed that we were a collective of beautiful sisters with our unique shape, size, color, skin tightness and stage in life?  What is more beautiful than an old woman with a map of wrinkles on her Goddess face like a collection of ancient stories? Or a sister with soft flesh and lines like a tiger that once gracefully stretched to make room for her son or daughter?

Everything is gonna be alright.

So here’s an invitation to you, Dearest Reader:

A few month ago I wrote a blog which included nude photographs of my lumpy and bumpy post-birth mama body.  I had no idea how graciously it would be received!  Hundreds of emails arrived from other mothers who were touched with what I had written and by my potentially socially unacceptable nude self portraits.  I realized, with giddy excitement, that these women also wanted to share their stories. Some of them confessed that they had never shared the most painful details of their story with anyone until the moment they were writing me their email.  This moved me profoundly and with each subsequent email, I cried.

That is where the inspiration for my book project was born: “A Beautiful Body” Nude Photographs and Essays of American Mothers.  This is a call to all postpartum mothers (even those who are years past that moment).  I want to hear each mother’s story: What was her relationship with her body before, during, and after her pregnancy?  Did she feel beautiful, ugly, and everything in between? What emotional shifts, evolutions, and challenges did she experience? What was giving birth like?  Did you feel like a Goddess or far from that, after birthing a human?  Most importantly, what is one’s relationship to one’s body today?  Do you value your authentic beauty?  Do you feel even more beautiful after having your child, your children, or not? Is it still a struggle? Has society made it easier or more difficult to feel good about yourself?

And then there are our sisters who have the postpartum bellies but were denied the gift of having their baby survive.  Yes, there are a lot of stories out there and the very best story of all is Gratitude.  Happiness is a choice no matter how terribly we have been wronged.

Below is random work I have done over the last year to assist you in deciding if you would like to be a part of my book project “A Beautiful Body”. Either way, I thank you. Please share this with any woman you think would resonate with this project. My email is info@jadebeall.com and I can be reached anytime!

I am scared to share these photographs and writings with you. If asked why, I may be tempted to nonchalantly say I have no idea.  Except that would be a lie.  Deep down, I know why: Because I am a rebel with a cause.  Because I want to say fuck you to our society’s view on a woman’s body. Because I don’t want to be a photographer who only shows work of thin “perfect”-looking women.  Because it’s my belief that a body with curves and butt-dimples which has just given birth to another human should also be praised and seen as beautiful.

I gained 50 pounds during my pregnancy with my now-5-week old son Sequoia Narayan.  If feeling self-conscious on the road to getting bigger daily heading into his birth was scary, I am realizing it was nothing compared to how I feel in my body without the excuse of a growing human inside. Now I simply feel fat. I know this may expose me to a host of responses ranging from pity to jealous anger. But it is my truth.

I had been active until the morning I went into labor, ate mostly greens and rarely indulged in sweets!  ”So what HAPPENED?!?!”  I kept wondering…  The answer is, LIFE happened.  It’s true I had an easy birth and have a beautiful healthy son, so the last thing on my mind should be the flesh-rolls of my stomach & back, the dimples in my booty, and the dark circles under my eyes.  But I am here to confess: It is a struggle to feel beautiful right now.  I am a WONDERFUL caregiver and feed my son all day from my newly-swollen breasts. I have stayed up most of every single night of his first 5 weeks of life feeding him & caring for him, which makes me feel truly SELFLESS.

Yet, guess what Sequoia has also taught me?  That I am also incredibly SELFISH!  I like alone time gardening or being in a bubble bath.  I love my job and nurturing my business.  I like sacred time all to myself.  I NEED to exercise and dance! So, tearfully alive, I  am setting out on the path of finding the blissful balance of embracing both my selflessness and my selfishness.

What does any of this have to do with photographing my newly plump and naked body?  I suppose it would be that I selfishly want to BURN the veil that hides the beauty of a body that has gained 50 pounds in order to give birth to another human.  I want to selfishly inspire women who are not our society’s idea of beautiful to feel Perfectly Gorgeous.  I want to make rich compost with the feelings of unworthiness and lovingly plant and nurture authentic seeds of love and belief that our bodies ARE worthy.  Worthy of love and appreciation no matter what shape we may be.  I selfishly want to show divinity where we have been taught as a culture to quickly dislike and judge.  Every body, including my own, is a map to an individual and a non-replicable story: That, dear reader, is truly beautiful.

Perhaps my lack of sleep has given me more courage to show you these vulnerable photographs.  Maybe it has assisted me in finding true freedom from caring what others think of me even more than before.  Maybe my son has shown me that being selfless and selfish is the medicine I have always needed.  Maybe being a mother is more dynamic and difficult than I previously thought.  Maybe I have never lived out of my Heart as fully as I am now.  Maybe I just want you to know that you are perfect just as you are in that body of yours and I am willing to show you my scary vulnerability in hopes to inspire you.

Please hold these photogrpahs and my vulnerability in the palms of your feet, hands and heart.  Try and be free from judgment.  Try to let go of needing to explain my fear and joy.  Someone once told Frida Khalo she was a wonderful surrealist painter.  She responded that she was not a surrealist painter, but instead she simply painted her reality.

My Mantra:  Fake it ’till you make it.

The true key to happiness is our choice to BE happy.  Maybe we need community.  Maybe we need to dance.  Maybe we need to climb mountains…  Open your wings and FLY.  Your perfect body will follow your heart if you choose to “live your life like it’s golden.”

These are my first thoughts put to paper with a beautifully-perfect 7-pound-and-some-ounces baby attached to me, sucking at my breast.  As I sleepily search for words to write to accompany the photographs I took last week when the entire family was in town to meet Sequoia, my sweet 11 day old son, I can not help but pause frequently and stare at the perfection feeding from my body’s milk.  Every little sound makes my heart melt.  Every movement a source of pride to my soul.  Every inhale and exhale a source of peace for me.  I feel so beyond blessed.

We had all been anxiously waiting:  Five days had to pass beyond his  supposed due-date before he began his grand entrance!  My mother and sister had flown in to help Alok and me, and they began to worry he wouldn’t come before they had to return home, a disappointing proposition, but we can’t time such arrivals, can we?  Hundreds of people were praying and giving me amazing herbal remedies to get my cervix to efface and to help contractions begin.  I even danced at 10 months and four days bulging at my own Friday night dance class that was being subbed by my dear friend.  It was juicy!  I gently danced with my enormous belly and at the end of class I asked all the dancers and drummers to encircle me and Baby to send inviting energy to my Boy.  I asked the group to hold in their mind’s eye one thing that they absolutely loved about this Planet.  Finally, I asked them to tell him it’s safe out here and that he was surrounded by love. Would you believe it, he listened: that very night, I went into gentle labor. With grace, my son Sequoia was born 2 days later on 2.12.12 at 3:49pm on a peaceful and perfect Sonoran desert Sunday…

Sunday morning my contractions were 8 minutes apart and quite startling to say the least.  I made no rush to get to the birth center.  I showered for the last time with my endearing and enormously ripe belly, climbed into a white dress, put on my handmade jade earrings and asked my mom to make breakfast.  In between contractions, I ate local eggs with local spinach scrambled into deliciousness.  I sipped perfect coffee.  I lit some candles.  I danced.  And in my own time, At 10am, I told Alok that I was indeed ready to go to the birth center.

There were no cars on the road.  The sun was shinning and the air was cool.  On the ride, Alok and I discussed our baby’s name and laughed about how strangely perfect the day was.  I gripped the leather seats during contractions as they increased in intensity.  Auspiciously, we calmly arrived at the birth center just as another baby was being born!  We were shown to our sweet, private room which had a four-post wooden queen-sized bed and a cavernous birth tub, put on soft music, lit candles again and took out my drum from the Taos Pueblo.  The midwife came in, checked me and supportively told me I was already 6cm dilated!  I danced again.

I moved about the room in an improvised choreography of positions. No machines were attached to me and only my family was around plus my dear friend Kacey, the midwife and the nurse. Alok and I even went for a stroll outside in the middle of my labor!   I squatted on the bed, danced on the floor, got in and out of the tub’s warm water.  As the contractions got more intense,  my sensitive and gorgeous partner Alok guided me through affirmations:  ”Say it, Jade: Tell me you can DO THIS!” he would compassionately command and I would repeat.  When my wails would ascend to the sky, he helped guide them back to a low, belly rumble.  He held out his arms for me to grasp and cried when I cried.  He reminded me how strong I am, how beautiful this journey was.

I began to become so utterly exhausted as I entered active labor.  Thoughts of emergency birth stories that I had heard over the last 10 months whirled in my head and fear knocked at the door to my heart:  I wondered if I could do it without some sort of intervention.  The sensation of the contractions were like nothing else I had ever experienced and I still can not find words to describe them.  I had been in labor for 4 hours at the birth center when the midwife checked me again:  I had progressed to 8cm dilated!  The contractions intensified yet again signaling transition and ‘bearing down’.  I squatted on the edge of the bed, I lay on my side with my left leg up and my foot pressing into Alok’s arm.  I was overtaken by a snake-like undulation and a deep uncontrollable urge to expel my bowels.  Sequoia’s head had begun to crown!

I looked at Alok and without words we knew we should get back into the water for this dance’s finale.  We climbed into the tub and Alok got behind me in the water.  My family circled us and were “ohmmmm”-ing to help my wailing stay low.  My water, intact until now, finally broke and with the very next contraction, Sequoia Narayan Appadurai danced his way into this world with one final undulation of my uterus. Magic. He came out of the water in a flash and was crying immediately. As soon as Sequoia was put onto my chest, he lifted his sweet newborn head and looked me right in the eye, silently choosing to connect visually with his mother.  His head was perfectly round, his eyes were a deep sea blue and he had soft night-black hair all over his head.  He was perfect.  My life has not been the same since that moment.  I have become quiet and am at a loss for words.  My reclusiveness has multiplied and I spend my days staring at this little creature that did not exist physically 11 months ago.  My passion is now  feeding him, smelling him, asking him about the mystical magic of being innately inter-connected to that which I cannot see….

Beautiful friends Tara and Jaimie took my placenta, dried it and made pills with it for me to take as a post pardom herbal remedy.  I take them every day.  I am amazed, still, by the outpouring of love and support I have been gifted thru this entire pregnancy and birth experience.  I am not sure how I got so blessed.  I am not sure when I became so free.  I do know, however, that without all the hundreds of emails, without the $5000 that was raised by my community for Sequoia and I’s first month together, I could not do this.  It take a village:  to raise a child AND to support new parents…  Thank you, My Sweet Village…

And so now as I finish up these words, he has fallen asleep on my lap.  I am in tremendous awe of my body:  innately creating and birthing life all by herself and now producing food for this new two legged.  My female body gave birth to a perfect male human and I finally understand: Goddesses REALLY ARE everywhere…  I ask you, dear reader, will you go hug a mother today and honor her…

Here is a series of photographs we took last week when Alok’s dad, his dad’s beautiful wife and my family, aka “Sequoia’s Maidens” were in town.  Everyone has left now and it’s just the three of us plus Guapo, my 12 year old Golden retriever.  It’s quiet in our beautiful home in the Barrio Metalico.  The Desert Spring light is flooding in form the south glass door.  Our gardens are coming to life, our rainwater cistern is full.  The only music is  Sequoia’s ocasional cry when he wants more milk….  We are beyond blessed.

It’s nearly time to part ways now.  The honor of facilitating the making of a human body in my own body is nearly over.  This belly will never be this exact belly ever again.  My Son will never again receive nourishment from his umbilical cord.  I will never feel him slowly stretch and move against the inside of my abdominal wall as if her were dancing a sacred warrior dance.  These last days are the end of his fascinating and rhythmic hiccups inside of my own being, like an intimate drum beat only I will ever know and which makes me so very proud.  I will never again feel for his head to see if it is still pointing down.  I will never share this body in this way, ever again, with this human.  Now we prepare to become 2.

Where do we come from?  How does that which did not exist before come to BE?  How did you get to be you and how did I get to be me?  10 months ago, this Human inside of me, wiggling and moving as I type these words, did not exist physically.  And now he is about to join our Planet Tribe.

These past 10 months have been joyous, scary, nauseating, beautiful, emotional, draining, exhilarating and Divinely Perfect in all of it’s imperfections.  For the first time in my 32 years on this planet, I humbly and gratefully stepped out of my own way in order to let Spirit and the Ancestors guide what is to Be.  In 39 weeks, I have sunk to my lowest low and risen to my all time highest high, and gained 40 pounds of mass and now I just want to be silent.  Silent so that I can hear the stars and the approaching full Moon which will announce my Son’s Due Date.  Silent so that Baby Boy can hear my Taos Pueblo Drum and the burning of sacred white sage that I spread around us with wild turkey feathers.  Silent so that I can hear the rich conversation of the birds outside my window calling in the Magic that humans can so easily miss.  Silent so that I can hear Great Mother Spirit guide me to my own innate wisdom.  Silent so that I can hear the wave of water which has been inside rush out like a mystical red carpet made from Sea Water and Dolphin Breath.  I need silence so that I can hear my Son’s heartbeat and his call as we prepare to touch skin to skin for the very first time in the History of Man Kind.  I seek silence now to hear my own tears fall out of my tired eyes onto my wonder-filled red and heaving chest.

I have loved Frida Khalo since I was a little girl having been raised among wild and eccentric artists in Mexico.  Like Friducha, I find myself exploring my body and the reality which accompanies it with curiosity and intrigue;  sometimes very judgmental but more often with a forgiving eye.  I am not shy in my body:  whether I am what society would label skinny and fit or lumpy and bumpy at one time or another, I do not worry what you, dear reader, will think of me.   I respect you whether you dislike or love me.  I lovingly expect nothing from you.  My body has been a continuous and evolving canvas and I take great pleasure in creating art with it; even when it scares me.  I move this body to Guinea and Congolese rhythms not because I want you to think me a splendid or imperfect dancer.  No, I move this body to channel my Spirit Guides and my Ancestors.  I do not photograph my nude body for you to compliment my beauty or point out my ugliness or to have you comment on my courage or on what you might think a disgrace to be exposed.  Not at all.  I photograph myself because I am passionate about the Human form.  I am eternally fascinated how skin, hair and pupils reflect light.  I love my body as much as I love yours.  I love my vulnerability and pain as much as I hold yours tender in the palms of my heart.  I honor my authentic exquisiteness as much as I ecstatically bow to yours.  I see no problem in contrasting opinions because to me authentic opinions and thoughts and wisdom all boil down to the same exact ancient root:  Evidence That We Are Alive Together.

Self Portraits and photographs i took of another beautiful Pregnant Goddess.  Thank you thank you thank you.

My life as I know it is about to change:  forever.  In about 4 weeks, most likely under the guidance & protection of the full moon of February 7th and surrounded by my own tribe, I will give birth to my son.

I have no expectations of how the birth of my son will unfold.  I know not where the choreography of the birth will take place:  in a birth tub or in a Goddess squat, or if I will need the assistance of a hospital.  I do, however, know one thing: the word “love” will have an entirely new definition for me.  My heart, like my uterus which has grown 5 times it’s original size from 8 months ago, will expand and receive for the first time ever sensations of ecstasy previously unknown…

Many of my family and friends have lovingly shared with me all the fascinating things that are about to change in my life:  Poop, pee, throw up EVERYWHERE!!.  No sleep, no time alone, etc etc etc EVER AGAIN!!  ”It’s so hard, get ready for the most challenging and wonderful time of you life!”  I love all of this wisdom and I cannot help but smile:  Poop and pee and throw-up and no sleep and hard times are who I am!  I have been juggling 7 things at once since I was 7 years old!  Hardship is where I SHINE!  So can I do all of this while also facilitating a human who has chosen me as his birth channel into this world?  I say YES!

I am so confidant in the ease of this transition of “my life never being the same” because I have, and you can quote me, the most EPIC community in the whole entire friggin’ WORLD!  I have Grandmothers and Mothers and Sisters and Brothers and Grandpa’s and little ones waiting to care for my boy.  I have dance camps waiting for us to dance and cry and laugh at; I have Africa and India waiting for us to visit and to educate us.  I have a tribe with arms wide open! And so I am at ease.  I have no interest in being my boy’s only Mother.  I am very much a follower and believer of the wisdom of Sobonfu Somè.  In her books she explains that raising children in her village in West Africa is a COMMUNITY experience.  The 2 parents are key players in the raising of the child, but it’s actually the responsibility of the ENTIRE community and the PLEASURE of the Tribe in providing the child with all the wisdom she or he will need.  I am walking evidence that it takes a village to raise a child.  Sobonfu gently reminds us that it also takes a village to support new parents.  I know so little in comparison to what my community knows!  A a whole, I am confidant this child wiggling in my enormous expanded uterus as I type these very words will have everything he could ever need. This realization makes me giddy with excitement…

Call it a tribe.  Call it a clan.  Call it a network.  Call it family or call it your crew.  The fact is: we all need one.

Here is the beautiful Tucson Yoga Tribe.  I love them a whole lot.  Thank you all for allowing me to play with you big kids!

I have heard hundreds of confessions of sorrow by now.  I have listened to thousands of stories of suffering.  I have held in my very arms countless sisters and a few brothers as they wept and shared their feelings of utter unworthiness and despair.  These confessions used to be only on my massage table where my clients lay both physically and emotionally naked and entirely vulnerable.  Quite often the confessions of un-connectedness, loneliness and self-loathing come from my dance students.  Lately the confessions have been in front of my camera.  Women come into my studio with shaky legs, feeling uncertain if they made the right decision to have a photo shoot with me.  They might not even know why they are there.  My sisters often feel ashamed that they are having photographs taken of themselves, as if they are doing a sinful act to honor their authentic beauty.  And most, at least 99.9%, are completely uncomfortable in their naked skin.  Whether they are what our society defines as fat or thin, they ALL share the same learned story that most of us have chosen to believe:  I am not good enough.  I am not beautiful.  I am not perfect.

When did we learn to be ashamed of our skin?  When did it become uncomfortable to be in our own skin?  When did we begin making our reality one of self-suffering and pain when examining our reflection in a mirror?  When did we learn the definition of “ugly” and “beautiful”?  Who gave us our definitions of “fat” and “thin”?  Who was it that convinced us that we were not good enough?  That we were not worthy of feeling “prefect”?  Who told us that were were imperfect?  Why did we choose to believe them?

There are people who have miraculously escaped form this belief system that was unconsciously and perhaps also consciously instilled into so many of us.  There are others who have re-written the lies into beautiful new truths of authentic beauty that are free of self-suffering.  There are those who still believe that humans could never be perfect.  There are others of us who have to make it a daily, intentional practice to be free from pain and to rewrite the pain into a lesson of beauty.  There are those of us that choose to see pain not as an ugly devil but instead as a sacred teacher that leads to even deeper perfection.

I once had a discussion with a scientist from the University of Arizona while on a backpacking trip in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  Under a crisp and clear night sky saturated with diamond-like constellations in Northern Arizona we discussed perfection.  I had recently re-read for the billionth time “The Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz.  I was high on redefining how i saw the world!  I was especially enamored with Don Miguel Ruiz’s theory on what he calls ”the biggest cop-out of our time”, that phrase:  ”nobody’s perfect”.  Like Ruiz, I believe we were born in perfection and we ARE perfect.  My scientist friend had a wonderful point that IF we are naturally perfect, how could we strive and evolve and become BETTER?  I didn’t see why I couldn’t be perfect right in that moment, evolve and learn and grow and dance and gather wisdom and still be perfect then too?

I mean, do we see a healthy beautiful baby born out of the vagina of another human and say, “Life is not perfect?”  Do we question the perfection of the female body which can MAKE an entire human in her own body, including a human with the opposite hormones and genitalia, while she lives her usual, everyday life?  Do we question the insane PERFECTION of the Himalayas, or the divine PERFECTION of the Amazon or the incredible perfection of a Sequoia tree?  LIFE is all of those things and WE are also life, so how could we not be PERFECT too?

I am no master of thinking I am perfect.  Lately I avoid the mirrors at all costs.  I am 40 pounds heavier than I was 8 months ago and my booty has a shake of it’s own.  I am one of the most OBSESSED people when it comes to the sacredness of a pregnant female body, yet I have to admit I feel large and awkward and puffy.  Yet every morning, before my feet touch the ceramic floor of my bedroom, I practice my gratitude mediation.  I am grateful for my baby’s hiccups in my belly!  I am grateful I am snuggled beneath a down comforter.  I am grateful that I have food in my kitchen and hot water in my bath.  I am grateful that I am creating life and redefining pain!  I am grateful that I have the opportunity to push a boy out of my body and have it feel perfect instead of painful.  I am grateful for all of the perfection that surrounds me…

There are a lot of different answers to these questions and a lot of opinions, and yet all I know is that when I see myself as perfect, I no longer need to take things personally. I no longer need to compete with other photographers or dancers or massage therapists and I can be free of the need to be beautiful or ugly.  I can just BE.  I choose to bathe in gratitude and practice my gratitude mediation for all the small and big things in my life.  I honestly BELIEVE in the perfection that we naturally are.  I believe that life is far more of a magician than I, and I will never call Life’s creation’s imperfect!  I no longer need to prove anything:  I just enjoy being perfect me gazing at perfect you.

It’s scientifically proven that happiness makes the human heart grow younger.  Happiness is the abundant side effect of being interconnected with those in our life that inspire us and to those we had no idea we could possibly love.  Happiness is the practice of forgiving those who have “harmed” us so we may be free from our suffering.  Happiness is practicing to gently embrace those who do not agree with our personal and authentic message.  Happiness is rewriting the I-Am-Not-Beautiful-Enough-I-Am-Not-Skinny-Enough-I-Am-Not-Sexy-Enough story that we have agreed to believe as truth when we look in the mirror.  Happiness is the choice in believing that yes, we ARE worthy of Brilliant Love!  Happiness is helping someone who needs our gifts.  Happiness is stepping out of victim role and into Authentic-Power-I-Can-Forgive-Role!  Happiness is being empty of judgement.  Happiness is allowing you, this Divine Reader, to think that I am crazy or to allow you to think I am brilliant because no matter what you choose to think about me, I am still going to choose to be happy.  Happiness is forgiving all that could possibly make us unhappy…

Some years back in his book “The Wisdom of Forgiveness” his Holiness the Dalai Lama tells a story of being hospitalized for stomach pain which, according to the Dalai Lama, was due to not listening to the advice of others to slow down within his very busy schedule.  However, while he was in the hospital in India, they did numerous tests on the Compassionate Teacher and the doctors were stunned that the Dalai Lama’s heart was in the condition of a 20 year old man.  His devout practice to Happiness, the Dalai Lama says, has kept his heart juicy and abundantly young.

Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in my home country, Los United States of Gringolandia.  See for yourself:  http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/  A generalized definition of Happiness I seem to witness in America tends to be first and foremost: Success (meaning money making success).  ”Happiness” is sold to us in grow-your-penis-longer pill bottles and weight loss powders and “Happy Meals”.  Our society tells us we will be happier if only we had the latest fashion and a blood-diamond ring.  I do not blame society or anyone in particular because we are responsible in what we choose to believe in.  So why do we choose to believe? Happiness has been defined, served to and BELIEVED as TRUTH by Americans via media for nearly a century….  Why?

Interconnectedness.  Being “empty” of want.  Forgiveness.  These are words that His Holiness the Dalai Lama uses to describe Happiness.

The most happiness I personally have gained in my life is learning HOW to forgive…  I LOVE forgiving.  When we cannot forgive those who have “hurt” us, the ONLY one who continues to suffer is the One who cannot forgive…

Because I learned to forgive the man who sexually abused me for years as a child, I have such a PROFOUND love and respect for my sexuality.  I am happy that I have forgiven my first and second love and the man I once nearly married for being unfaithful and lying to me about it.  I am so happy I have forgiven myself for believing for much too long that I am not worthy of incredible Love:  Self Love.

I am happy that I am pregnant with a Son 7 months in my belly because I now have begun redefining my relationship to the Divine Male.  I have had to do a lot of forgiving to men whom I have allowed into my Heart in my 32 years on Earth. I have a wonderful father and a stepfather who both love me and countless Elders who have been such powerful Divine Male Leaders in my life.  And yet as a teenager and as a young woman and now as a Mother, I have had few if any close Divine Male Friendships.  My authentic relationship with men is that they either want to be with me sexually or have nothing deep to do with me at all.  This makes it incredible difficult for me to have a gorgeous, Divine Male Partner, the father of my Rainbow Warrior Boy in my Belly, who has nearly all female friends.  My life has taught me that a man wants to have sex with me or be done with me.  To forgive that pain-causing belief system etched into my soul by past male friends and lovers and allow my beloved to be their authentic, beautiful SELF is such a guaranteed road to happiness:  one I am lovingly and diligently working on every single day.

And now:  And now I have the honor of experiencing an entirely NEW relationship with a Divine Male:  to be His Mother.  There will be a lot of forgiving needed in my future and this makes me very, very, abundantly HAPPY.

I know how to forgive.

It is scientifically proven that happiness makes the heart grow younger.  Wanna forgive?  Wanna be high? Wanna be Interconnected with me and everyone you love without needing to change a thing?

Here is a series of photographs I took of myself at 6.5 months pregnant and a series I had the honor of photographing of one of the most gorgeous sisters I know…