Bravery

I have this amazing "sister." Her name's Kat. And she is amazing, AMAZING.

One of Kat's greatest strengths is that she knows how to love, and show her love, and be supportive, and be a great friend, and a confidant...

And it does not matter if she agrees with you, or likes your decision, and would have made the same decision herself.. she just knows how to make a person feel loved.. and important... and special... and mentally sound.. like no matter how crazy I feel like I'm getting, she helps me to feel grounded, and she helps me to know that God still loves me and that I'm going to be okay.

And she does it better than anyone I have ever met.

She has great faith.

((and she is so beautiful and so much fun!!))



Anyway, I found these pants at Kat's house.. They are Kat's pants.


Cute, army green, cargo, brave girl pants.

And so I had to borrow them.

Because they remind me of Kat's self confidence...

And they remind me to be brave.

And besides, I need cargo pants to carry my baggage.

I'm trying to unload a bit of my baggage... but I don't even know about all of it yet. I'm discovering it a bit of a time.

For example.

If I respect someone.. or if a person in authority gives me their opinion about something. I automatically agree with them.. regardless of how I really feel.. because I want their approval.

For example:

I am a republican. I have always been a republican... I have always voted 100% republican.

I have no idea what republicans really stand for or believe.

I have no idea who 90% of the people I have voted for even were, or what they stood for.

Or why Republicans think Democrats are evil Satan worshipers...

Or why Democrats think Republicans are evil Satan worshipers...

AND, I really like the idea of socialized health care. I know it will have faults, but I don't think they could be possibly worse than the health care situation in America right now.. I mean which is worse, possibly a lower standard of care, or sitting up nights with a severely sick child with a horrible case of bronchitis... stressed to the max because your husband is out of work and you have no health insurance, and you know getting the care your child needs is going to put you hundreds of dollars in debt that you can't pay back..

Yeah, I did that... like so many other people... I've been there.

This post is not about socialized health care.. or politics...

It's about me figuring out what I want to believe.. not what I'm told to believe, or expected to believe.

(these are my brave girl cargo pants... I think I'm going to wear cargo pants every day for a while..)

It's about self esteem too.

I SOOOOO wish there was a self esteem store.. well there sort of is.. it's at the mall, but unfortunately self esteem that you have to buy doesn't usually last past the 3rd wash cycle.

In high school my self esteem was built on what other people said about me. For me, that meant I liked boys a lot... because boys made me feel really good about myself. Everyone needs to be built up, and I only seemed to get that from boys. And so I spent all my time thinking about boys, and wanting boys to like me, and thinking of ways to make boys like me more. And the more I did to make boys like me more, the less self esteem I had. And so the more I felt like I needed boys to like me.. It was a really effective downward spiral.

Healthy... I know.

Then I got married. And my husband did his best to compliment me when I looked nice, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't his fault, and I do not blaim him. It was my baggage. I was use to more attention.

I went for a long time not feeling very good about myself, till I found art again.

Then my self esteem became tied entirely to my art. If I make a piece and don't get compliments, or I should say, don't get a LOT of compliments on it, I feel very, very down. I know that sounds very self centered, and very prideful, and very "Oh look at me.. and look at what I can do!" And it totally is. See, I have baggage. BIG big baggage.

And now that I've lost weight and feel relatively good about my body image ALL of my self esteem is built into compliments on my figure and compliments on my art. If I lost those two things I would feel completely 100% worthless.

I realize all of this makes me look like a completely self centered B!%@).

Maybe I am.

But, I don't want to be like this.

I want to change. I've wanted to for a very, very long time.. But I didn't know how. I still don't really.. I just recognize that change needs to happen.

I want to know that if something happened to me and I lost those things that I could still love myself.

I'm working on how to get there.

Introducing Aletha:


Ah Aletha!

She is the only project I managed to finish at Brave Girls Camp.



Alethea means "truth."

She carries messages of truth in her beak.

Today I am clipping a new message in her beak.

The message says,

"Your soul deserve your attention, sweet friend."


And so it begins.