Unspoken - #01

"It's in the Unspoken Words that we find our Story" - Jeanne-Marie Webb

I love this picture...

It is subtly reflecting the lines around my eye, that are very much there - a clear indication that I am almost 40, but my eye has never looked more focused. Maybe a bit of a prophetic picture for the year I am having so far. But what is also clear to me is no matter what I say or feel about this stage - there is no stopping this!

I spent two weeks thinking about the theme - {unspoken} and what it means to me.  It's pretty powerful... the {unspoken} words...  So much can happen and be said without words... A gentle smile, kind gestures, a look.  As I switched off a little this year and cut myself off a bit from the noise, the chaos and the demands of life.  I tried to find my story as I silenced all the voices {screaming out what they thought my story should be}.  It's in the quiet place and the {unspoken} words that I have started to discover {me} again.  I guess when we are slow to speak and silence the voices, it's where we find the spacious place... to Hear. to Listen. then Respond.

Introducing Project40

I am 7 months and 7 days away from turning the BIG 4.0. I am both loving and afraid of all I am discovering in turning 40 and that in many regards, I feel like my life has only really just began and other times my life seems to be happening too fast for my liking. My girls are growing up at a pace that takes my breath away. I am finding grey hairs, very long grey hairs in my mop of long hair. My body shape and face is changing every time I look in the mirror and at times I love that fact that I am growing to accept my now womanly body and shape and my new sense of style that goes with accepting oneself, perhaps for the first time in my life.  There was a time as a young mother, I felt people saw me more as the aupair to my girls than their mother but now there is no mistaking that I am their mother. There is something strangely beautiful in that too. In my workshop book that I got this year, Unfurling, Misty Mawn has a whole section on Self Portraits and starts off this section with this quote "I paint self portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best" - Frida Kahlo. I have never painted a self portrait and don't often take pictures of myself, so this will be new ground for me. In a way, I love this quote and this exercise because I think perhaps I have never really known myself at all and for the first time, I am discovering who I really am and I would like to know this new me best. I have decided to do this exercise in doing #40 different self portrait shots and placing them in homemade journal. There are almost 20 theme ideas in the book, which I will use and then I will add to that another 20, as a symbolic journey of me turning 40. The idea has been playing in my mind for a while but last night I couldn't sleep with all the ideas swirling around my head.

I am not taking this {exciting one minute - scary the next} journey alone... my running and creative buddy, Mel is journeying with me... she also turns #40 this year. So we will journey together through our self portraits and see what we find, or rather WHO we find on the other end!