Reflection and Inspiration
In my list of unlikely inspirations from this week was an article I stumbled upon while scrolling Twitter at around 3 am (yes, I know – healthy habit club!). It was a NY Magazine product review/personal essay written by Annie Hamilton about her Week With a No-Needles Lip Filler. It made me laugh SO hard. Granted, it was 3 am, so I make no promises now.
But what I loved so much about the article was how amazingly, hilariously honest and blunt the writing is while she gently references about one million – what I would see as – insecurities: dissatisfaction with her lips, unrequited love and competition, constipation, shame-induced lies, a cigarette addiction, and nightmares about money.
She writes in an almost no-nonsense way that makes it all feel like nonsense.
And her Instagram (viewed at approx. 4 am) has a similar vibe: she discusses her mental health; posts rejected tapes of her acting – even though she now sees the accents as regrettable; videos of herself as a child being rude to her mom; ‘out of touch’ letters she’s sent, and lets herself be beautiful, funny, and real.
I could go on, but I won’t, because it’s not so much the specifics of the content as the energy of light-hearted self-acceptance it exudes that really touches me.
She’s so transparent about what she wants so publicly, while I (and many others, I’m sure) can struggle to even admit these things to ourselves. Yet of course we all want to look good, feel good, be loved, be successful and feel like we’re worthy of being accepted as we are.
I’m so grateful to the people who have the gift of documenting their human experiences like this. I find it so heart-opening, and I wish we all (very much myself included) could have this same courage, even and especially as we continue to struggle in other areas of our lives.
All of our hearts open in response to openness. And I’d love a more open-hearted world of flawed people sharing their longings and embarrassments.
In a Guided podcast soon to be released by Lindsay, she and Tia Meredith touch upon the liminal space you can occupy when you are no longer what you once were but not yet realizing who you are becoming.
I feel a little like that now. When I come across people who express themselves as authentically as Annie Hamilton does, I think about how much I’d like to be like that. Yet I’m deep in the process of letting go of all the shame that frosts over any willingness to be… like that.
In the meantime, I’m so glad people are writing about putting lip-plumping gloss on inside of a porta-potty so that the person they love might notice and love them more. I’m far from that literal situation, but the humanness of it makes me say that IS me. And right now, it’s somehow the most heart-breakingly lovable image of being a human that I can imagine.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
- May Sarton