Wow, what a week in BIG…Morning pages every day AND contour drawings of ourselves. This touches me deeply. I have to record myself as the elder woman that I am, all those wrinkles shaping my skin over my bones. I have to look in the mirror – deeply – and see what is there. I’m resistant at first, but then I get misty eyed when I realize I see my father’s eyes in my own. Shocked a bit by recognition and then touched by ancestry.

I chose to do the blind exercise first. Meaning that we looked in the mirror and NOT at the paper as we traced the shapes of our faces. I tried it with a brush loaded with paint but found I couldn’t keep the brush filled with pigment long enough. I felt like I was cheating because I looked at the paper for where to begin the next loaded brush stroke. I decided to use a marker and try it again. I liked that one so much, I decided not to color it in but draw another one to paint.

Here are the first three.

Then came the real challenge. Drawing myself by looking in the mirror AND at the paper. Trying to make it look like me in other words by seeing and drawing the actual  relationships between cheek and jowl, nose and glasses. Oh god I wish I were young, I wish I were beautiful, I wish I were anything but what I am – until suddenly I love what I’m seeing, the strength, the wisdom, the sparkle, even the age spots…

This is nothing short of a blessing.