I Believe in the 'Beauty Way'....

I wrote this one year ago today. When I read it I still feel like a pile of bricks is sitting on my chest and I cannot get air; I feel like my chest will break under the weight, and I take a sharp breath in and swallow hard to make sure I do not cry, because I don't want to anymore.

And at the same time I wonder by what grace is was I had the ability to share such a very deeply kept and vulnerable piece of myself like this.

~Kasey Ford

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I have a thing - something about Sunday nights - an anxiety, a sadness, a feeling of isolation and not fitting into the world. Some kind of heartache from the lack of kindred souls I feel - people who crave magic and connection, people who are fascinated by the mysteries of the universe - those people with whom we can lose ourselves for hours in conversations about human experience and the cosmos and our deepest desires and deepest wounds and the spiritual and the mystical and ancient cultures, shamanism, mythology, astrology, energy, the magic of nature, and the way we find healing through music, art, and dance, and how our courage to express that can be the one thing that opens someone else up to an entirely new way of being in this world.

My heart longs to go on late night musical journeys, singing along to everything we can think of, or dancing all night in costumes, or just laughing until our stomachs hurt and we are crying and can't breathe and then giggle about it for days.

Yet the weekends seem so fleeting - such brief and elusive moments of feeling accepted and valued and connected, whether an illusion or not, and then Sunday night comes - that dictated portal back into the 'real world' - the stress, the responsibilities, the pressure, the feeling of being obligated to do something to survive, to be accepted, to conform to the system, to gain money or status or power...the resignation to 'the box', whatever that is for you - the cubicle, the 9-5....

And Sunday night brings Monday morning, and that pressure and fear and the feelings of lacking value and worth when my life doesn't fit neatly into this Monday morning 'box' - this social ideal I have been programmed that I must somehow fit into to be 'okay', 'accepted', 'respected', 'valuable', 'responsible', and contributing to society - this social ideal we have all been programmed to force ourselves to fit into, even if we just don't fit that mold.  Even if cramming ourselves into it kills our souls slowly every second of every minute we try to be something we are not, until we must shut down and numb ourselves to even tolerate it. Even if it goes so against the very essence of our beings and is so out of alignment with our truth that we experience such a loss of hope and faith, such a loss of inspiration, such a depletion of our very life force that it drags us down into deep depression to the point that we may even experience complete incapacitation, suffer debilitating health issues, or even turn to addictions or worse to ease our pain.

Then, rather than giving any consideration to WHO WE ARE, and what nurtures OUR individual souls and sets OUR hearts on fire...rather than focusing on sharing what we truly are here to share with this world, which is how we will be of most service to the collective, and how we will live our highest purposes, we are likely given some sort of anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication (as surely there is an issue with us and not with being forced into conforming to a system that we are not meant to be in) so that we can get back to being a good little worker bees as quickly as possible.

I believe in the connection of tribe, our ability to create, and the gift of art - writing, poetry, visual art, dance, music - to move us, to open us, to change our perspective, to heal our hearts, to give us that moment of realization where we open to an entirely new way of being. I believe in what I am calling the Beauty Way - I believe that beauty and art heals - that it is important to bring BEAUTY to others' lives and choose to see the beauty that lies within each of us and exists all around us.

Sunday nights... Monday mornings...  they are another reminder of a system that has seemed to have completely lost its soul and with it any consideration for the individual and the unique gifts each one of us brings to this world, and how profoundly that can impact and heal both the individual and the collective. 

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