I have two projects that have been percolating in my brain for quite some time. I think (with tentative hope but filled with self-doubt) that they could be wonderful - allowing me to stretch and grow as an artist and as an individual.

Both projects are inspired by this two year journey of awakening and authenticity. Both are extremely personal and rooted in my soul. Both would combine photographs and written word; bringing them together into a combination of art and activism that makes my spirit soar.

These projects tease at my brain, pull me into daydreams and visions of what I could create. A website and blog? A gallery show? A book? I can see these things already, in a fuzzy, hypothetical way. I imagine their texture and depth and impact. But then I push these dreams down and away, even avoid them entirely for weeks at a time. Why? Because the very audacity of this vision frightens me. A book? Really? Who am I to even dream it?

But even as I run away, these dreams grow more complex and more finely developed. As if the project itself is driving the process of its own becoming, and I am merely the medium for a deeper force. This is clearly rooted in a source so deep within that it is also far beyond, and I cannot take ownership because it is so clearly composed of everything and everyone.

But now suddenly, there are possibilities, connections, wisps of potential appearing out of nowhere. A grant application that must be submitted in the next two weeks. A fabulous local company interested in partnering with me to bring this project to fruition. And so the visions become more whole. They take on a shape and weight and solidity they didn’t have before.

Now I can really see it - the placement of impactful photographs and well crafted words on a stark white page. The tones and texture of perfectly converted black and white images. I can feel the weight of pages turning in my hands. I can visualize the fonts even. I know what the paper looks like. And in the brief moments that I am bold enough to allow myself permission, I can see myself standing in the middle of an urban gallery space (in a fabulous dress and killer heels, naturally) with my community swirling around me, taking in the end result of months and months of dreaming and work.

But I cannot quite convince myself that I can do this. That I am worthy of this.

It took me several years of hard, hard work to call myself a photographer. Although I’ve been writing for years, I’ve only just begun to call myself a writer. I spent a lifetime denying the existence of creative force inside me, and it has been infinitely difficult to accept and nurture it and allow it to sing and dance and move through me. There is something so exquisitely vulnerable about claiming this for myself; of accepting the drive to create and then to release it all and just sit and wait.

It is far easier to minimize this idea, to avoid that nagging sense that this time I’m actually meant to follow through. As long as it only exists inside me it is safe, I don’t have to risk judgment or failure, and I can tell myself that someday maybe the time will be right. I can convince myself that the idea is not good enough or important enough, that I don’t have the proper skills or experience or near enough talent, and besides, - clearly I’m not organized enough to pull it off! And so I talk myself out of something that I desperately want to do. The stories I have told myself for far too long have taken root in my heart. I have given them a power I know they do not deserve, but I don’t quite know how to conquer their hold on me.

For over a year I wore a custom designed necklace made by the amazing Janet at Jewelry for the Soul. I didn’t take it off once. It’s a simple but beautiful silver rectangle stamped with the words “BE BOLD”. For a long time I needed that necklace, it was my talisman – giving me strength during days and weeks and months that I barely knew how to survive. And I would hold the pendent on that simple necklace and repeat those words like a mantra ; giving myself the courage to believe that I could be bold enough to not only survive, but thrive.

At some point, as life has settled into a pattern and routine lulled me back into complacency, I took off the necklace. After I post this I’m going to go find it and put it back on – because right now, I need the reminder to be bold in a totally different way. If I’m going to closer my eyes, open my heart and take the leap to do this, I need to be bold in a way I’ve never been before.

And I do need to do this.

So I post this in celebration of boldness, of vanquishing the demons that convince me to live small. I post this in the honor of laying claim to my authentic self and to the giant leaps and grand vision that demands. To embrace the potential and the risk of unwrapping my heart and offering it to the world in the purest way I know. In the name of trusting that what I offer is perfect and wonderful and that the people who need it will embrace it, and me, in ways I could never imagine before beginning.

So now I start talking myself into it….