"I know better than to choose that thought!” I wrote to my friend as
Changing thoughts happens in a finger-snap moment of awareness. Snap your fingers with the new thought and wham! Change happens. We just need to remember to choose better. Sometimes that may become a conscious daily practice.
we chatted using facebook messenger.
The thought, however, hovered. Words had been planted in my brain by someone who intended to hurt me by pushing a button I openly wear on my sleeve.
“I’m working on a poem called ‘Ugly’,” I told her, “Because that is something Maria (a one-time-friend) really drove home to me: that I am not pretty, I am not attractive, I am in fact unappealing visually....as if I need to be reminded.”
The first line of the poem goes like this:
When you’ve been ugly your whole life you get used to it.
One can pretend to believe beauty comes in different packages, in scarves and hairstyles and jewelry and just the right make up application, but then there is the occasional bold proclamation to the opposite.
I can still picture Frank, in fourth grade, gleefully shouting -- “Hey, Julie - You’re pretty… UGLY!” Then there was my dear friend. Bernadette, saying with kindness, “Julie, you aren’t that ugly.” I can still see the cracks in the sidewalk by my feet during that warm declaration that chilled the walls built around my heart.
Just today someone called me “Lovely.”
What is up with our resistance to hearing lovely and our perpetual agreement with thoughts from others tattooed into memory, especially proclamations that cause pain?
With the speed of a fingersnap I pivot into "Lovely."
Yesterday I sent a completely authentic photo of myself to my friend, Ernie.
I might not be conventionally beautiful, but Jaxon thinnks his Granny is pretty cool!
It was silly and a completely unglamorous photo with no make-up, no posing, nothing but extreme joy in a moment of time with my grandson. It came with a warning of the unattractive nature of the image in comparison to my normal public persona.
When I asked if I had actually sent the photo (I wondered if my fear over my appearance blocked the send) my friend Ernie responded like this: “Yes, my dear you did send it and you are lovely….”
I am lovely.
I am not so-ugly-I-am-lovely, like a manatee, in Ernie’s eyes I am lovely.
I am choosing the thought, "I am lovely."
I am choosing that thought, "I am lovely."
I am choosing that thought, "I am lovely."
I am lovely.
I am lovely.
I.
Am.
Lovely.
My friend, Jennie, took this make up free photo while we were chasing the sunset. It is on the secret road to my secret sunset destination. We never reached that exact spot, but the moments along the way were absolutely glorious.
Now before your mind focuses on my rant about “ugly” this isn’t about that even though it is. This writing is about choosing the lovely thought.
It is about choosing pure and right and holy thoughts that expand your senses, that allow you to think with depth and clarity to see what is true about and within you.
With practice, the beauty of all comes in and trumps the limitations of words we call “negative.”
Sometimes we muddle through in the manatee so-ugly-it-is-lovely but before you know it, the lovely is what remains.
I am choosing that thought, "I am lovely."
====
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)
Follow on Instagram
And naturally, on Pinterest, too!
© 2014 - Julie Jordan Scott - all rights reserved.
