It’s funny how some days I feel like being way out there, and others I want to abandon the whole project and hide in bed. Today turned out to be one of the latter type of days. I just didn’t feel so much like being out there in the world of people. And I got myself back in an old mental wagon-track — that the world of people doesn’t want me to be “out there,” either. That the world would rather just not see me.

It’s kind of odd and oxymoronic to have a disappearing complex when you’re large-bodied. Most of my school years I alternated between feeling horribly conspicuous and wanting to be invisible, and believing that I actually was. Maybe I thought everyone was doing what I was doing, glancing over my body without its making a strong impression of its existence. 

In retrospect I suspect I’ve always been more present in other people’s landscapes than I thought.

Maybe I just couldn’t handle what I imagined they thought of me, so I told myself they didn’t think of me at all. 

I think it must be the same with me and my own gaze. I fear my judgments about myself, so I don’t let myself look long enough to see what or who is actually there.

But that’s what I’m trying to change. I’m trying to look with honest attention at this quirky, inconvenient, intriguing belly that’s not claiming to be anything other than itself. And then when I look at it with the willingness to see something positive — an archetypal image emerges — a connection to the Divine Mother, full-bellied and open and strong — a richness to explore, a life teacher, a secret map that was hidden in plain sight.

Nonetheless, for getting out of the way for a while (when the seeing and being seen is too much), I’m so grateful for the woods.

Trees, thank you.

More Colorado eye candy.