Feeling beautiful for me is a practice.

It's not like I wake up every single day singing songs of how beautiful I am to myself (though that would be pretty rad).

I mean, I have 30 years of undoing this chaotic tangle of self-loathing (I kind of remember being 4 years old hating my big knobby feet, my limp hair and the rolls in my small belly... Yep...how did THAT happen?).

I do, however, wake up grateful for another day to practice feeling beautiful.

I wholeheartedly practice being beautiful to my life partner, to my son and to my family and friends.

I practice using my words with mindfulness.

Instead of, "Oh Jade, you really shouldn't have stayed up to watch that second movie last night 'cuz now look at your ugly-ass dark circles under your eyes, you look, like, 20 years older today,"

I chuckle and say "Jade, you sure know how to live your life with joy and I am happy to see my dear friends under your eyes, yet again, to live another blessed day on this Earth together, just as you beautifully are."

It's kind of weird to admit to you all that I talk to myself in 3rd person, but what the hey. I am all for being real!

Meet Garbiella, the goddess in these images. She hails from Peru and I have never ever heard her use a negative word when talking about herself or our mutual friends. It is such a joy to be in her calm artistic presence as she exudes a humble confidence with who she is. She is a dancer, an artist and this baby is her second child; her first-born is a teenager and came to our shoot to help support her mother. I tried not to wail from the beauty I saw through my lens during this shoot as she danced for me, so comfortable in her skin, so at ease being nude. It inspired me to be an even a better me, dark circles and all. (story continues below photograph)

You see, if I talk about how much I hate the dark circles to everyone around me, they then have an opportunity to learn from me to also negatively judge their precious self and they most likely will not trust me when I tell them how beautiful they are because they see me as beautiful yet there I am, being cruel to myself. If my son hears me complain about how my jeans still don't fit 'cuz I am so horridly fat, he might never believe me when I tell him how beautiful he is because he will wonder if I think he is horridly fat too since I have already lied about myself too many times right in front of him. Does that make sense?

Our words are powerful. So ask yourself, "How do we want to use them?"

If you ever need support like I do several times a day, I recommend a couple of uplifting books from beautiful artists who are no different than you and I. They too are human, practicing joy. I love having these books on hand that remind me, for the 100th time, that the stories in my head are learned and remain there only because I choose to continue to believe in them.

• Clarissa Pinkola Estès (Women Who Run With The Wolves) “There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.
  
  If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."

• Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth): “Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”

• Don Miguel Ruiz (The Fifth Agreement): "Why not put yourself first, maybe for the the first time in your life? You can relearn how to love yourself by accepting yourself, unconditionally. And you can start by projecting unconditional love to the authentic you. Then practice loving your authentic self more and more. When you love yourself unconditionally, you are no longer easy prey for an outside predator who wants to control your life. You no longer sacrifice yourself for anyone. If you practice self-love, you will master self-love." (Story continues below photo)

Why is self love so important? What's the purpose of abundant self esteem when there are much bigger problems in the world? Isn't loving one's self kind of self centered? Why are these 'truthful' images you take of women so important to you? Isn't it OK to want to see the altered and photoshopped images of women in mainstream media? People ask me these kind of questions all of the time.

I answer them with what I know which is my personal experience of such things, which is all I really know:

When I love myself, I am way nicer to my life partner, to my clients, to my students. That is to say, it's easier for me to be kind when I am kind to myself. There are a lot of problems in this world and when I feel like superwoman as opposed to the ugly duckling, I get shit DONE. If loving myself and believing that I deserve to be called beautiful is self centered, so be it! I don't believe in labels anyway, so go to town, label me as you please. When I see truthful images of women in mainstream media, I look around to see if a teenager, perhaps a reflection of my own teen self from 15 years ago, might digest this other variation of beauty, which might be a truthful image of a girl in a magazine with a dashing sprinkle of pimples and a little roll over her shorts. And I hope that perhaps that teenage girl will contemplate how to help those in need instead of wasting her precious life loathing herself for falsely thinking that she is ugly, like I did my entire teen life. I think that the altered and photoshopped images that we see pretty much all of the time in main stream media are GORGEOUS. Art is art. And art is also the untouched beauty of a woman, just as she is.

You are irreplaceably beautiful, just as you are.

If this work touches your heart, please check out the Pre-Order page for Volume 1: Mothers. That action directly supports me to do this work! Thank you, -Jade