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Own Your Beauty is a groundbreaking, year-long movement bringing women together to change the conversation about what beauty means. Our mission: to encourage and remind grown women that it is never too late to learn to love one's self and influence the lives of those around us - our mothers, friends, children, neighbors. We can shift our minds and hearts and change the path we follow in the pursuit of authentic beauty.
Each month, Karen Walrond will share a homework assignment with you.
If you blog, we encourage you to share your experience completing the assignment there and link your URL in the comments of Karen's first monthly post. If you don't blog, that's okay! You can share your thoughts or homework in the comments. We welcome your thoughts in any format -- text, video, photography or art. Open your mind to the possibilities.
Own Your Beauty Homework Assignments
October: Authenticity
Grab a pen and paper, and list everything you love to do that fills you with joy and/or grace. It can be shooting photographs, or cooking, or taking a shower, or running a mile, or singing or whatever. Write deeply profound things, or silly little things, like organizing the junk drawer in your kitchen. Write until it exhausts you. Just write whatever fills you with joy or grace.
Then once you're done, keep that list somewhere where you can find it at a moment's notice (and if you're moved to blog about it, we'd love to read it! Please share it with us in the form below.) You're going to want to refer to this list again over the next year. Possibly even for the rest of your life.
November: There Are No Flaws
This month, let's reflect on our perceptions of ourselves and start really seeing how beautiful you really are. For the next four weeks, I'll invite you to start a self-portrait project: Take a self-portrait every single day. (Don't worry: Like every exercise we'll do here on Own Your Beauty, this can be for your eyes only.) You can do it with your fancy camera, or you can do it with your camera phone, or even your webcam on your computer. You can do it at different times of the day. And you can do photographs of your face, your feet, your hands, whatever you'd like, as long as you (or some part of you) appear in the photograph. If you can, try to do the self-portrait in a moment of happiness or contentment or peace: while you're having a night out with friends, in the morning before the start of an exciting day, with an afternoon cup of tea, or even at night when you're feeling relieved that you're about to fall into bed. If it's been a crap day, take a few moments to silently breathe, slowly and deeply, and get centered in mindfulness before you take the picture.
December: Creativity
I invite you to join me a creative exercise that is becoming a yearly ritual for me -- the making of a vision board.
Vision boards are simply a visual way of making your intentions concrete, and some people swear by their magic. I don't know how magical they are, but I do love them far more than making annual New Year's resolutions: Resolutions have a way of making you feel guilty if you don't accomplish them; however, vision boards are simply beautiful guideposts that help steer you in the direction you hope for yourself -- and for me, the results at the end of the year are often uncanny. The process of putting a vision board together can be an incredibly meditative and reflective time (and therefore, a nice break from the end-of-year madness), and best of all, they're incredibly easy to make.
Here's all you'll need:
- Some posterboard, or canvas board, or a large surface you feel comfortable gluing things on (nothing smaller than, say, 8 x 10 inches)
- Rubber cement or glue
- A stack of old magazines and/or photographs
- If you participated a few months ago, your list of things that fill you with joy and grace
- Some time set aside to daydream (a good hour ought to do it)
The first thing you're going to do is start paging through the magazines and photographs, cutting out or
