A lot of people don’t know this about me and I don’t really talk about it much, but for many years I didn’t know I wanted to be an artist. I’m sure it was always a seed of a desire buried deep inside, but it certainly wasn’t part of my 5 or 10 year plan.
I studied psychology in school and I planned to get my PhD and become a psychologist. I was always a straight A student. I was good at math and physics and things like that and I did them because I was good at them but not because I loved them. What I really loved was painting. My whole life I loved painting. I would just sit and draw for hours and although I saw no use in it, it was what I loved.
But for many many years of my life I had this insane and fiery need to prove myself, that I was a good, giving, capable person. I didn’t feel like art was useful enough to give my life to. And I didn’t feel like it showed my talent as a person. Of course, I had no idea what it really is to be an artist and I was foolish enough not to see the incredible gift that just being and existing as an artist (or anyone for that matter) can be for the world.
But no matter what is true, at the time I couldn’t see it. And I felt like in order to survive and take care of myself I had to have a profession, something important that people respected, something that showed my intelligence and capability. So I wanted to be a psychologist, to do highly demanding research, and help people who ”really needed help” and to make a ”difference”... and so it went... until I was burying myself in work and so stressed I was having back pain and trouble sleeping. I kept going this way, trying to prove myself to myself for years, getting into perpetually more challenging and damaging situations until finally I broke.
Luckily for me my tolerance for pain was not so high that I wouldn’t crack. I was still sensitive enough to feel it. I still had a knowing in my body of what it was to be soft and joyful, to be playful and free of the pressures of the world.
So after years of taking mental and emotional abuse from my jobs and my career path, I finally gave up. I gave up on the long, dull road to all of the externally prescribed achievements and finally began giving into my heart.
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love” (still my all time favorite rumi quote) was the guiding light and mantra that kept me going. Through one of the most painful and confusing times in my life, I let go of layer upon layer of ego, letting those parts of myself die over and over again until all the need for success and desire to prove myself was stripped away and I could finally hear my own voice over the hum of the world telling me what I should think or do or be.
After hours and hours of therapeutic work, spiritual healing and inner reflection, I was finally ready to let myself soften into the stronger pull of what I loved. And what I found is that I was soft. Softer than I ever could have imagined.
I found myself reflected in the petals of flowers, of silk against my cheeks, of warm sun and lazy Sundays. I found that what I wanted was simply to remember the soft way I once let the world hold me, the memory that everything could be taken care of for me if I let it.
And I also found the strength I truly wanted, the strength to know myself amidst the throng of voice, the strength to let my own voice shine through the noise, the strength to open and blossom and be wildly soft and feminine as I truly was.
That was when I truly began to stand in my power - the moment I allowed myself to be fully soft, softer than I felt I was supposed to be, more trusting than I had ever been taught I could be.
My power was in letting go and allowing the world to enfold me in beauty, a beauty I could never have created by force of will or achievement. And that is why softness to me is strength. It lies in my journey and the strength it has taken me to give myself permission to be soft, to be gentle and to let myself become enfolded by beauty.
Click to view some of Camille’s original artwork.