looking after yourself

I am currently feeling sorry for myself. I have a sore throat and feeling really wiped out, generally speaking "a bit under the weather".

Over the last 24 hours that I have been feeling like this I have spent a lot of time sleeping, I haven't been out, and I have been eating comfort foods.

I have made myself hot chocolate, found some telly to binge watch, and perhaps a film or 2. With my concentration span one or usually lasts all day.

Someone came round with some food for me yesterday and to check up on me. I was really grateful as I really didn't have the energy to cook myself and it was really kind to be thought of.

I haven't felt guilty about all of this, because the best thing I can do to recover quickly is to listen to my body and what it is saying ,which is to rest and relax and be gentle on myself.

Its made me really think about how I react when I have a bad mental health time. I tend to try and ignore it, pretend it isn't happening and hope it goes away. I try to carry on as normal, but it never works and usually makes me feel worse.

I feel guilty and tend to stop looking after myself so well. I get angry at my limitations and frustrated at the world for not understanding.

I find all that "self care" stuff alien, and "not for me". I can go without that, I just need to carry on and I'll be ok, thank you.

I am going to challenge myself to treat my bad mental health days in the same way I would a cold. Treat myself to those "nice tissues", eat the comfort food, spend time in bed if I need to, look after myself more, be creative. Have a nice cup of hot chocolate.

Self care makes sense for a cold, so why not for mental health?

blame, guilt and understanding

Last night I realised that I had been feeling better all day, and that I had just noticed.

I spent the next hour trying to work out why my depression might have all of a sudden lifted when there was no major life change or big thing happened to do that. It got me thinking, why am I doing this? Why do I want to know what made me depressed in the first place?

In the past I would say that it was to do with blame. If I could blame something then it would make it somehow ok, give the depression a reason for being there and a reason for going. However, there is a big danger with this for me, that if I couldn't find a reason externally then I would focus on me, and start to blame myself, the choices I made, the reactions I had to things etc. This just made the guilt come along, and not long behind would be the depression again.

However, last night I realised that if I sought understanding, a neutral perspective as it were, that this is why i was depressed, and simply put anything that was internal down to the chemical reactions in my brain, as such something out of my control, then I could also consider it a learning process, and not a blame process.

I am hoping then that by neutralising the process of reflection that I can see more clearly why I get depressed, not so that I can avoid those things as such (especially if they are unavoidable), but so that I can understand that it will make me depressed and what I could perhaps do to protect myself, aside from avoidance, if that strategy doesnt work.

what is a photo?

There are many different reasons why people take photos and as many different ways to interpret them. These are my favourite reasons and my favourite way to interpret them.

I describe myself as an emotional photographer. Whilst I am a competent technical photographer, which lays the foundation of any good image, I believe my strength comes from capturing an essence within the frame that goes beyond the technical, reaches into the viewer and grabs them on an emotional level.

I love to tell stories with my images. I believe that the power of a photo and the memory contained within it is a somewhat magical thread of frozen time, much like the pensive in Harry Potter. The photo tells a story, sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden.

Sometimes it is the photographers job to tease those hidden emotions out of the image, and sometimes this just isn't possible within the photo, so the photographer must also describe the image appropriately to accompany it ad elicit that emotional response in the viewer. The photographer becomes a guide then, to their life, or the subject they have captured. It is like asking the photograph questions.

Why was it taken?
what is it actually showing?
how does it make you feel?
Why does it make you feel like that?
What happened before the photo was taken and what happened after wards?
What memories does the photo bring to you?
what is the photos story?
who is in the image and why is that subject important?
what is in the foreground, and what is in the background, why have they been placed there?

These are some of the biggest questions I like to cover with my descriptions. The added bonus of describing an image is that for those who are unable to fully see the image with their eyes they can see it with their minds. It goes beyond the technical composition of description and tells the viewer a story.

Technical descriptions tend to answer these questions

Who is in the image, what is the subject in relation to you?
describe what they are wearing?
what are they doing?
where is the image taken?
what is in focus in the image?
What colours are predominant?
Is the image light or dark?
is there any detail that you wish to highlight?

One thing I always do though, as any good story teller must, either visually or writing, is leave room for the person to add their own interpretation, to leave enough of a gap for them to feel a personal connection to the image.
I find a real vulnerability to this, as my image is a conduit to my soul and inner most feeling and by sharing it with the world I am exposing those things alongside it. By leaving it open to be interpreted leaves it open to being misinterpreted. However, I also think that there is a beauty in this misinterpretation, as it means that the image is not only personally powerful, but collecitively so, and therefore adds to its overall power.

coming out as female

I go to a monthly gathering of like minded academics called the disability research forum. I came away from it challenged and inspired, as I often do, but also contemplative. For this academic season of talks we all introduced ourselves and our preferred pro nouns. It was introduced as a way of disrupting the normative assumption of gender binary, and it certainly worked for me.

I have never had to outwardly say I am female, as it has always been assumed. I often have to correct people with my daughter, because she often wears blue, and joggers. As I did so I felt strangely vulnerable, giving me a taste of what non normative gendered people might feel when having to explain their difference.

But also it was very indicative of my recent experience, where I am attempting to "become someone new". I did this mainly through changing my clothes, and for the first time wanting to embrace my femaleness. Before giving birth to my 3 year old I had been pretty fluid in my dress sense, embracing both male and female clothes, exploring both "sides" of clothes shops to get clothes that relfected my identity. Since giving birth however, I have become more restricted in my clothing choices as my physical body has become more "female", and unwilling to fit into the male shaped clothes. Aside from the practical difficulties of having to negotiate the more complex female clothing size system, it has also meant a complete shift in my body image, identity and place in the world.

I found myself wanting to wear skirts and dresses and enjoying the experience of being more female. I had never really considered this before sitting in the room declaring myself as female before, but I would say, looking back, that for the last month I have become the most societal recognizable "female" that i have ever been.

This is a really important experience, as I have never considered before what actually makes me feel "female". I certainly didnt even consider how much power my clothing choices has on that gender identity, even when going through the process of changing those choices.  This gender identity "shift" has not diminished or reduced my overall sense of self, but actually strengthened it once more. in the same way as I was previously happy being quite fluid in my dress sense and embracing "femaleness and maleness" in my dress sense, I get equal strength from this new choice. The strength, i feel comes from being confident in whichever identity one choices, and not the choice itself.

My three year old on the other hand is currently becoming gender aware and is what I like to call "gender curious". They was a boy yesterday morning, but then they decided half way through the day that they was now a girl. (this is perfectly normal and its just part of life) I just hope as a parent I can facilitate the journey through life as openly as my child needs me to be. :)