Beauty Unfettered, Irrefutable

 Dear You,

    I know some days are just unbearable, intolerable, harder than others and downright ugly. When your mind is on its usual tirade ranting like a mad man magnifying the many ways you failed at well, pretty much anything. When your heart just can't take it anymore and you have no platitudes left to soothe your soul. But there is one thing you can do. Or maybe two. Pause in your hurried, seemingly unstoppable tracks of the runaway train of your mind. Close your eyes. Breathe. All the way down to your gut. Hold your breath for a moment. Then let go slowly. Release everything that you could ever think of with that exhale. Repeat as many times as necessary. And when you're ready to open your eyes, do so. Then look around. Look for one thing that is beautiful. Or simply not ugly to look at. The sun shining through that window, clear, blue skies, your child's smile, flowers that refuse to die.  Or maybe if you're ready, look in the mirror. See one thing that lifts your heart. The bridge of your nose that reminds you of your mother, your liquid brown eyes that resembles your father's, or maybe the freckles on your face that were born out of spending hours in the sun holding earth, burying seeds that sprout into nourishment eventually.  Or that lotus tattoo on your back to honor your wounds and the places you have healed and are still healing. There is beauty for as long as you remember to pause and breathe. The pausing and the breathing are beauty itself. Beauty is all around you, holds space for you. Beauty makes you bear the burdens you carry. Beauty compels you to rise above the pit of travails and hardship.  Beauty saves you from your own mind. Beauty soothes, heals your heart. Seek beauty. Most of all, never ever forget the beauty that resides within your soul, that which is unperturbed by the critiques and judgments of the world. Your truth, what you are born here to do. Go inward. Return to yourself.  Go back to it over and over until you gather ground and the day though seemingly intolerable and downright ugly is further alchemized into beauty all on its own. 

    Know this. You got this. You can do this. You were born to be this-- unfettered, irrefutable beauty.

With all my love, 

An Margaret

 Lotus Tattoo on my back by Cebu Tatto Artist Raycien Credo Caberte. Her attention to detail is impeccable and lines are clean and refined. Follow her. She is one amazing artist.