How I gave up eating..and saved my soul

I am a HUGE stress eater.  Make that an GINORMOUS emotional ball of stress eater. Anytime I am sad, angry, stressed out, or even sometimes happy...I feel like I want to eat something.  There are days I feel like I never leave my kitchen and it is not always stocked with the most healthy things, let me tell you.  I usually try to find some sweet or sugary snack to help me through. And since I don't normally buy any of those things..I'm forced to improvise.  Cereal sprinkled with sugar, toast with a nice cinnamon sugar sprinkle, anything sugar related really.  If Cascades Ice Cream were any closer to me, I would be their best customer ever!  So you get the picture right? 

This winter was particularly nasty. And I'm not just talking about the weather.  I'm not sure if it was the combination of the awful  weather, or what..but I was extra bitter. Somewhere between the beautiful colors of fall..and the hopes for spring..my soul became bitter.  Don't get me wrong..I still loved everything I was doing, but there was just something else deep inside that decided it was going to be cold right along with the wintry breeze.  I just felt trapped, trapped in my kitchen!

 If you are a professional photographer running your own studio, or you own your own business...you may know this struggle.  Between paying bills, doing taxes, managing your business, and then also trying to feed your family..the pressure sometimes becomes too much.  I knew that if I didn't get out of whatever funk decided to take hold of my soul...my heart for sure would become black like the evil queen(Yes I watch Once Upon a Time..and LOVE IT!) and my pants would increase a few sizes!  I had to take action, I had to free myself from this emotional, stress mess I had become.  My Soul couldn't take it anymore...Enough was enough.

I have ALWAYS loved inspirational books, quotes, anything that will give me a quick pick me up.  I started first by a daily reading of the quotes I have. These one line quotes from some of our histories greatest men and women give me the pick me up I need. The pick me up to let go of the problems, and issues that I did not have control of.  To help realize I can only control how I feel, and how I control my reactions to the situations around me.  I wanted to not worry so much and go back to the things that used to make me truly happy. These helped give me a boost.

Along with my quotes, my mother had given me a book for christmas, "Praying for Strangers" by River Jordan. It took me 4 months to start reading it but now reading it has helped open up my soul. It's an amazing book that I recommend to everyone who wants a little extra push to believe again.  I then continued this adventure of soul searching and finding my passions again.

Next was photography and why I fell in love with it.  I remembered being so excited when I would develop my own film and print my own images in college. Being able to create a beautiful image from start to finish was so rewarding.  Even though I don't have a darkroom, I still have tons of old film.  I decided to try it out and send it to a lab in Oregon that a good friend recommended.  I used two rolls of old Tmax 100 speed film and tested them by taking photos of my pets, and also a session I planned with a client.  I wanted to fall back in love with what I do everyday.  It was so exhilarating to rely solely on my skill as an artist and photographer to make sure that they would turn out.  It took about a week to get them developed and scanned and then finally they were done!  I had not been so excited to look at photos in a very long time! They turned out even better than I had expected!  

With this renewed spirit, and the continued practice of letting go, I started to feel better. My soul didn't hurt as much.  My heart started warming, and I was not always negative.  I still have stress and anxiety, but it is not as heavy as it was before.  I will continue this soul searching journey and journey to be a better me.  I will take a second each day to read something I love, to hold my son a little longer, to walk my dogs one more time, and to do something I love each day. You are probably wondering what this had to do with my eating habits.  Well I am glad to say, that I am not camped out in my kitchen every second of the day. My soul searching helped me give up eating!

Here are some of the film photographs that I captured! I have not done any editing and these are all straight scans from the lab!  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did creating them:)