This took me a while. I started going through all my old photos in my phone & then moved on to IG & Facebook. I looked through every single photo & then made my way to the old hard drives. I wanted to see & understand every moment of my life. I wanted to practice loving all the versions of me. I’ve been thinking a lot about the human capacity to change & all the ways I’ve changed. I thought about all the moments of morphing I’ve hidden — all the photos I wanted to bury forever. The practice was to look at the tough photos & love myself through them. To reflect & celebrate all its taken to get to THIS moment. The outward goal was to make something. At a certain point, my energy became a bit manic. I felt like I couldn’t stop until I got to the end, so I just kept swiping & clicking & turning the pages. The goal I set myself was starting to feel like a trap — a pressure building to complete it. I started to think about all the times in life where I thought: THIS is the trip, or THIS is the experience, or THIS is the moment that creates the love/understanding/realization/safety I want. THIS will be the thing that transforms my life. I started to reflect on how often my future was unstable & unreliable — how often I felt like I was racing the clock to clean up a mess. I needed to get things done because I didn’t know what tomorrow was. I needed the money, the job, the answer — because my life depended on it. I remembered how often I’ve felt like a mess. How hard I’ve fought to not look like one. How much of my messiness I hid in a folder somewhere deep on a drive. How many times I rushed towards the finished piece, or shared only when things were “ready.” The work became to focus on the process instead of the outcome. When I wondered what the value was, or if I was wasting time, I let a bigger part of me know that this shit is valuable. The exploration & expression of self, is valuable. The gradual & layered access to self is much less concrete than a finished product. It’s frustrating, complex, wild & beautiful — growing one inch of root at a time. Those deep roots are what makes it transformative. Every moment along the way deserves a breath.