Tales of Recovery~Reclaiming the Felt Sense of Beauty`

Tales of Recovery this week sprouts from an experience I had at a retreat with my hands as I was led to softly touch and massage them in a guided meditation. Noticing how my hands are looking more and more like my mothers, I felt a sense of grief at first, then such deep pleasure and intense beauty.  The felt sense of beauty is so many times bypassed by the deep struggle that we hold because of standards of 'beauty' artificially created by others- and then imposed on ourselves. 

How where you SEEN as a little girl? As a teenager? A grown wom@n? Where you compared to others? To the magazines and the movie stars?  The long time struggle of looking "good" so they (your parents)could marry you off is SO OVER... so why are we still in this game?  Can the dreadfully artificial and suffocating ''standards' of beauty be identified, acknowledged, let go off and released for good?

Can we Reclaim the Felt Sense of Beauty? The Strength and Dignity of feeling embodied IN Beauty and how sorrow and suffering are part of the story? 

We can try and escape from suffering, or from aging- but the humility of understanding that learned beauty is just that: a lesson that may or may not be true is really liberating.  

Perhaps this not-knowing is the winning ticket, and the Felt Sense of our own inner beauty is the best dignified return to Love~