Beauty Lost Collage Card (2011)
The Fall 2011 Reclaiming Beauty Playshop is going strong! This session we are using the myth of Demeter and Persephone to explore Beauty Lost/Beauty Found through Persephone’s fall into the Underworld and eventual rising up as its Queen. We recently did an expressive arts exercise using Collage Cards. One card was to depict our personal fall into the Underworld – our Beauty Lost. The second card was to depict our essence before the fall – the beauty that was part of our childhood innocence – our Original Beauty.
I was glad to have engaged in this process with the group as it helped me deepen my understanding of my own Reclaiming Beauty process. The original Beauty Lost exploratory questions include: “When did you stop singing?” For me, that question goes straight to the heart of my journey because as a musician/songwriter that is exactly what happened to me from losing a sense of my own beauty – I stopped writing songs, stopped playing my guitar, stopped singing. As I depicted in my Collage Card, silence was a way to avoid the pain of the grief, sorrow and suffering from my life experiences.
In 2006, when I was first exploring the Beauty Lost questions, I wrote the following in my journal which I titled “Reclamation Proclamation.” (always have had a flair for the dramatic – it’s part of my original beauty!)
My essence is orange. I know it is. Fiery orange, yellow, red, swirling with aliveness. These questions, even just speaking them, make me feel a sadness in my heart. I think of my dad, my family having breakfast in Rhode Island, during a time where I was feeling very disconnected from who I was. He was looking over at the young girl, about 5 years old, at the table next to us. She was on the edge of her seat, eating voraciously, she could barely sit still she was so in awe of the delight of life. She would let out one burst of glee after another. And my Dad, looked over at this little girl, and looks at me, and says, ‘Heidi, she’s just like you were at that age…’ And tears filled my eyes because at that moment I remembered who I was, and how disconnected I felt from that being inside my heart… I can feel so deeply, and for years I was consumed with only melancholy. A heart-breaking thing, then, to be reminded of who you truly are, a delight-filled being of joy. The 20′s were a journey for me, and I know at what point in my life I stopped singing. And forgiveness of myself and others will free that delight and creativity. And my baby, by my side, opening myself back up to the flow of creativity that is who I am when I am at my best – the Princess of Wands with the wisdom of the Queen of Wands – that is my what’s happening now. Oh little Heidi… you are still a part of me, and the wisdom of my 30′s, and the groundedness, will be the synthesis, the integration, the Art of my being.Original Beauty Collage Card (2011)
my essence is fire, delight filled, delight full, oh… please come out and play
thank you for seeing me, dad, helping me to be and to remember
thank you to yoga for reconnecting me to delight every day
even if you can’t hear it, my heart still sings its’ love songs to life
(2/22/06 – age 30)
What are your experiences with remembering/reconnecting to your Original Beauty? Please comment to join the conversation.
Try the Collage Card process: Beauty Lost and Original Beauty. Then please share them with the Reclaiming Beauty community!
I leave you with a wish/a prayer that my Mom offered me in my Senior Yearbook -
May there always be a song in your heart,
~ Heidi
Tags: beauty, collage cards, original beauty
