The thing I was most excited about when I got my first iPhone was the reverse camera. Finally, not only could I take pictures of my family, but I could be in them. And in them, I was. For the first time, the kids and I were in a photo together…a grainy photo with long arms and distorted faces, but I was in there. I loved getting to share these moments through social media and basked in the compliments. I no longer had to wait for my husband to come home to take a picture or lug out a tripod to capture a moment. We were there and we were in it together.
The thing is, sometimes in those moments, we get away from those moments. It is less about our kids, more about us. The trend isn’t to post pictures of our kids at the park. It is mom at the park, the top of mom’s head at a historical monument on vacation, mom at the movies eating popcorn, mom with her stressed face with the kids behind her.
A lot of mom.
A lot less moments.
A lot less kids.
This summer, I am challenging myself to less summer selfies, more self.
Return to Being An Observer
You don’t need to be in the picture of a moment to know that you are there. If you want to capture the moment, turn the sound off on your phone and take a photo of your surroundings and your beautiful kids you made. Revel in the beauty of those moments and capture them as they are. Not posed. Not forced. Not necessarily you.
Ditching the phone altogether and actually lugging around that expensive camera you just had to have is also a great way to get back to being an observer in your life without the temptation to be in the shot. Although I love food photography, I struggle photographing my people sometimes. I am hoping that this commitment to getting back to being the observer will help me do a better job capturing those moments in better quality.
Get Back to Journaling Moments
I have gotten away from journaling, but I happened upon some of my old journals and scrapbooks from when I was a kid and it was a treasure box of memories. I reveled in capturing moments then and I always wrote everything down. I have let my blog be my journal, but I have those private moments that don’t need to be shared with the world that I want to remember forever. One journal that I got as a holiday gift is this One Line a Day Journal (affiliate link). In this journal, you can jot down one line a day, but on one page, you can look at a five year glance. It is a fantastic way to look at how you spent that one day out of the month over the course of five years. I want to start getting back to that and having these moments on paper for my kids. My worst fear is that they will never see or recognize my handwriting, as terrible as it may be.
I want to capture these moments, but not share them with the world.
Just them.
You Are Beautiful- You Don’t Need a Selfie To Hear That
You don’t need feedback from others to know that you are a beautiful mom and that you are doing a great job with your kids. As I age, I find that we crave that feedback even more, as though our beauty is slipping. Perhaps, this is that midlife crisis business told through a daily selfie. We all work through these moments in different ways- I took up a dance class that makes me feel like I am five again as I stand at the barre. That’s my way of working through the aging process right now.
You know how you know you are beautiful? It isn’t by a million Instagram followers telling you that you are adorable, it is the work and the love you are giving to others and the reflection of that love in the eyes of your people. Giving to others is the biggest self-esteem boost ever. It is a natural high.
This blogging, it’s a tricky business. People want to see you, they want to know you are real. Brands want you to show off their stuff. They want YOU, not a mannequin. And that is fine, for those business moments. I love showing off the wares of small business owners and helping support locally owned businesses. I share my haircut to hopefully get new clientele for a mom that is incredible at her job, I buy and wear a dress for another local mom who started her first small business, and yes, sometimes it feels good to be told that you are pretty. Who would not want to hear that?
The most touching thing I saw this week though was a Facebook feed full of beautiful words written and spoken by Maya Angelou. Not a negative word was said because this woman…she touched hearts, she shaped minds with her words, and she lived a life that I wish I could achieve a mere fraction of. She is beauty to me.
When I die, I hope that they won’t show a million selfies of me at my funeral. I hope that they will show a reel of all the people’s lives I impacted, including my amazing kids.
Because I want to give more self.
Less selfies.
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