Now that I have the name of my 40+ project figured out, Come As You Are –
I wanted to continue sharing the images of my sister, Kelley.
We’re five years apart. Kelley is younger.
She’s in her mid-40s.
You can do the math, if you wish 😉
Kelley and I went out to Folsom Lake in early January when she was visiting for Christmas.
We went before the sun rose.
The sky was that ultra deep pre-Sunrise blue which morphed into a soft opal pink as the morning awoke.
And yes, it was cold AF.
But she flung off her winter coat, stepped into that water and Vogued for the camera like a champ!
I really wish I had brought some Hot Hands with us or something.
Like a lot of people stepping into certain levels of their life, Kelley is in the midst of a metamorphosis.
I think sometimes we get into patterns where we do so much for so many others, that we forget that we are someone too.
And that our needs matter.
As that realization dawns on us, shifts begin to happen.
Internal.
External.
If we allow it, our current lives can crack open and begin to flow into the life
we were meant to be living.
And, if we are brave enough, we start to make decisions that will encourage that flow to continue, uninterrupted.
I asked her if she had any words of wisdom or a favorite quote she’d like shared along with her images.
She mentioned that she likes to follow The Precepts of Reiki, which she shared with me:
- Just for today, I will not worry.
- Just for today, I will not be angry.
- Just for today, I will be grateful.
- Just for today, I will do my work honestly.
- Just for today, I will be kind to every living thing.
They’re beautiful.
And on certain days, I’m sure following those precepts will seem somewhat easy breezy to embrace.
On other days, maybe not.
Life throws lots of challenges our way.
Sometimes those blips are out of our control.
Other times, we are the challenge.
We are the ones getting in the way of the life we’d love to live.
I believe that once you make a decision, the whole Universe will conspire to help you along your journey.
It may be rocky at times, and maddeningly frustrating.
Scary too.
What happens if you make the wrong choice?
What happens if you fuck it all up?
Then what?
Well, that there is where the magic lives.
The not knowing, and still doing, is where we gain our power.
They say leap and a safety net will appear.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
But a lot of times, it will.
It simply may not look the way you thought it would.
When the caterpillar outgrows the way it was living, they’re wrapped in a hard cocoon of uncertainty.
It must feel like a death of all they once knew about who they once were.
Do they wonder who they will be when they finally get through all of the pain?
Or do they think they will simply vanish, lost forever?
That’s the secret.
The caterpillar never disappears.
The best parts of them continue on and morph into a glorious new form.
The butterfly emerges, its wings made from uncertainty and pain
Tentatively She faces the Sun.
Wings unfurled, the butterfly takes flight into a new way of living.
A life they may have always dreamed about , a life they instinctively knew was possible –
A life they needed to surrender to
in order to fly.
