How I'm Creating A Beautiful Life

Overcoming my fear of being seen, and proving that a well-curated lifestyle is anything but vain.

I’m happy to report that sharing my ‘Alien Theory’ when it comes to feeling like I don’t fit in has influenced even me to try it out all over again. It still rings true. Writing it seems to have reminded me of its magic. I’ve been using it all week:

To wear the loud outfit.

To put on the fancy heeled sandals despite impracticality.

To eat the best food on my plate first, instead of saving it for last.

To convince my husband we should definitely go back to Paris. (Not hard to sell him on that.)

To go after my own wild, wonderful dreams through my work.

To confront my fear of being seen by allowing myself to be seen.

Approaching this life as if I am a visitor, here only temporarily is a highly palatable and playful way of honoring what is true: that life is very short. Nothing is promised, not today and not tomorrow. We barely have time while we’re here to experience all there is to see, feel, taste, do, become. When I remember I am only visiting temporarily, and there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to go about being who I am or creating and living my personal life, my reactions and thoughts become more exploratory, as they should be.

Living becomes both much more serious, and not serious at all.

As such, you might have noticed lately I am writing more about why I think that pampering ourselves is anything but vain. Sharing a few of my insider secrets along the way.

Criticism of my choices about what to wear or how to decorate and enhance my own beauty most often comes from a lack of self worth. It typically comes from people who don’t think they are ‘important enough’ to put that much effort into how the look, which I argue influences how they feel. But how could that not be important, when how we feel is how we experience life, after all? They will tell me ‘no one cares’ if they were tan or their fingernails painted or if their makeup or hair looks just right…They will tell me I spend too much time worrying about ‘vain’ things or that it must come from me being insecure. All while they are projecting their own insecurity, that should they make themselves ‘that important’ they’d be called out as not. I lived in that cage of fear for a long time, too. Until I decided to stop gaslighting myself.

As I’ve written about before, I spent an entire adolescence dreaming about living in the big cities, wearing chic dresses and heels, having a very metropolitan and highly styled life. I didn’t give myself permission to be that woman until a cancer diagnosis forced me to confront that the life I was living, and the future I was heading for, wasn’t one worth fighting for. So instead I fought for a different life for myself. One in which I became the woman I wanted to be, not because peers and mentors had said I earned the right to be her, but because I realized the only permission I needed was my own. I had had the power all along.

Now, I’m doing it again. Older, wiser, bolder.

Choosing to be highly overdressed on our night out. Painting my body into a golden goddess even when the weather outs my secret (it’s not a real tan! gasp!). Applying the coveted Dior foundation even though I’m only going to the grocery store.

Writing about it all here, to inspire others to do the same. Thus proving: none of it is for the sake of vanity. This is not to cover anything up or hide anything. It is instead to reveal, the beauty of ourselves, the beauty of the human experience, the beauty of our individual sense of style. And I”m taking this into my home, into the way I eat and drink and decorate and move through the world.

And the most beautiful part?

In doing so, I am again conquering my fear of being seen, by allowing myself to be seen for who I am. Someone who values style. And I am conquering my feelings of unworthiness, by proving I am worth the pampering I am worth the time and the effort. My life is absolutely important enough - even here in a small town.