Becoming comfortable in my own skin

I think it is time. Time for me to be me in my own skin, and to love that me. As I posted last week I have struggled to voice my opinion and share my true thoughts with most people for most of my life. I have been going through a transitional phase in my life this last year and I really want to let the real me out.

One of the things I have been working on in regards to finding happiness in my own skin is being comfortable and happy with my body. I have always struggled with body image, to the point that I have had friends tell me that I have body dysmorphic disorder. I can't say that they are entirely wrong either. I want to change this. I want to love my body.

Our bodies are such wonderful instruments. They are our vehicle of expression and experience. My body allows me to smell, taste, touch, see, and hear. It allows me to dance, love, run, smile, and so much more. These are just a few of the many reasons we should, myself included, worship our bodies and treat them with love and respect.

Being in an industry that is so focused on appearance has been extremely hard on my self image. I am always comparing myself to everyone else on screen or at the auditions. The image that is most desired is one that is not very realistic, and in most cases photoshopped. There are some that naturally have the "perfect" body out here, but I am not one of them.

This is exactly the mindset I am trying to change in myself. Why can't my body be "perfect" just the way it is? I am strong, healthy, and lean. Isn't that what a perfect body should be. It shouldn't matter that I am less than well endowed up top or that I have thicker hips and thighs, they are thicker because of all my years of dancing and running... it is mostly muscle, why can't I see that as beautiful.

I am on a journey to love myself, my body included.  Gratitude is so important if I want to live a life of happiness. My body does so much for me, and for that I am extremely grateful. Now I just need to find the ways to see myself as the beautiful person I am and love my body, just the way it is.

What are some ways that you work on loving yourself for who you are? What do you do when you start to freak out over what you see in the mirror?

It's Going to be Ok...

Sometimes I freak out, actually I freak out a lot. I don't mean to get all crazy, but sometimes it is the only reaction that makes sense. I am, by nature, a very reactionary and dramatic person. I think this is part of the reason acting comes so naturally to me. It doesn't take much to get me to a place of high emotion. As great as this may be for my acting career it can occasionally cause huge problems in my personal life.

There are times in life, like right now actually, where I just feel like everything is coming at me all at once. Being Buddhist I grasp the concept that if all of this negative energy is coming at me then I am bringing it into my environment... my question then becomes "what am I doing to cause all of this?" Obviously, figuring out the answer to this and fixing it is where my human revolution comes into play. But honestly all I want to do is either hide in a dark corner and rock myself to sleep or to just yell at everyone, tell them they are being unreasonable and extremely rude and then run away. Unfortunately, neither of these options is accepted or practical in our modern day society.

So, instead of doing all these completely unrealistic and terrible things that go through my head when I get into a tizzy, I have to find a way to calm myself down. Sometimes I do it by crying uncontrollably but the more usual way is by having a yelling episode where I vent everything there is to vent (and usually the same issues over and over) until I exhaust myself. Then I walk away from whomever I was yelling it at (usually Gabe because he is the only one around, poor guy) and calm down. I come to my senses tell myself it's going to be ok and then I go apologize to Gabe, and I figure out how to fix the problem or situation.

Currently, I am working on finding a more positive way of releasing that negative energy. I want to be happy, I am focusing a lot of my energy on keeping myself positive. Gabe is naturally an optimistic guy so it is easy for him to quickly turn a bad situation around. I am naturally pessimistic making it extremely hard to switch that negativity flip. Life can be hard. I get that I have it better than a lot of the world, but I still have my obstacles.

For a majority of my life I have let people walk on me. I hate conflict and am unusually compassionate about others, to the point of my own detriment sometimes. I will generally choose others happiness over mine and I have a very difficult time saying "no." I am in the process of changing this. I am done getting walked on. My opinion is valid and should be heard and respected. I should be allowed to choose my happiness sometimes too. Now, though, because everyone was so used to walking on me I am perceived as a bitch, pardon the language, when I do something for myself. This is infuriating to me. Just because I am choosing to think of myself first occasionally does not make me a bad person.

Life is about being happy, and happiness is what I am trying to find in myself right now. I am becoming the person I want to me, someone who stands up for herself while also thinking of others, someone who's thoughts and ideas are respected and heard. Finding this balance is proving to be harder than it sounds. So my journey continues.

What do you guys do when you are feeling crazy? How do you deal with people who treat you disrespectfully?  Would love to hear some of your stories!

Mid week ditty!

In honor of Les Miserable coming out later this year I wanted to put up a little ditty some of you may know. This song "I Dreamed a Dream" was actually the first song I ever sang in voice lessons when I was 10 years old. Hopefully it sounds better now than it did back then hah.

I am planning to make a better version with professional sound and better lighting etc, but since we don't have the time or space right now this will do. Right now we are packing to move on the 1st to a much better neighborhood, getting ready to film a short by an award winning screenplay writer this weekend, have my sister in town in a couple of weeks, my birthday, and then finally our cruise!  So many fantastic things going on in life:)

Hope you enjoy the video, and if not just pretend you did ;)

Skin Care Regime

So, it has been a while since I was consistently blogging and now that I am back things are going to change a bit. Before, I was focusing all of my blogs on  my life in the acting realm. I will still do that here, but I have decided to branch out a bit and allow myself to blog about other aspects of my life too.

Today I want to share with you my personal skin care regime. Let's be honest, I was blessed with really good skin. I know this and am extremely grateful for it, but I also think the way I take care of my skin helps a lot.

Ok, so here is a picture of me completely bare faced... a little nervous to show all of you because I have some pretty dark circles, but in order to get my point across I wanted to post a completely natural and unedited picture.

As you can see, I have a few red spots on my nose and I am starting to get some lines in my forehead and around my mouth...and that is totally ok! As we age these things naturally happen, as long as we do are part to maintain them hopefully they won't get out of control.

 1. Eat clean, healthy, and a lot of healthy fats. Drink lots of water
2. Moisturize daily...(may be different for different types of skin)
3. Wear makeup only when necessary
4. Use face scrub twice weekly to remove dead skin

So part one of my skin care regime is diet. I am super crazy healthy, as most of you probably already know. I eat clean foods and I eat lots and lots of natural healthy fats. The fats are crucial to the appearance of your skin. They help keep it moisturized internally, so to speak. I also drink loads of water everyday. There are so many wonderful health benefits to drinking lots of water and one of them is helping to keep your skin looking radiant.

Part two, I moisturize my face daily. I don't use traditional moisturizers as I found those not to be sufficient. I would put them on and then an hour later my skin would be dry again. I have really dry skin naturally so moisturizing is very important. I use virgin grapeseed oil (which is incredible for you). I slather on some grapeseed oil massaging as I go, then I soak a washcloth in hot water and I put it over my face for a minute. The hot washcloth will open up my pores allowing the grapeseed oil to sneak its way in and actually moisturize further down in my skin.

Part three is that I only wear makeup when I absolutely have to. The grapeseed oil is a natural sunblock so after putting that on I am good to go. I will be honest I do wear concealer under my eyes every day and a quick brush of powder to blend it, but other than that you will rarely see me with makeup on. Of course, when I have an audition or a reason to look really nice I will get made up, but otherwise I want to let my skin breath. I think it really helps keep my face fresh. 

Lastly, twice a week while in the shower I use a face scrub to make sure I get all of the dead skin off.

And that is it! So, I don't know if this is helpful to any of you, but I hope that my simple tips can help you too. We all have different types of skin that require different things, but I do believe that these 4 steps can help any type of skin.

Choose the Life You Want

As an actor life can be tough. We are constantly in a state of flux, either really high or really low. We are under pressure and scrutiny by others, in most cases by people we don't even know. We are judged on our appearance and somehow usually made to feel like we are never good enough.

But if you are like me, utterly dedicated and in love with acting, it is totally worth it to go through all of that in order to do what I love; act. I have always said, as have many others, that if you can find something else that you are passionate about, something that makes you feel "full" like acting does, then pursue that in life. Acting as a career is challenging to say the least, and I would certainly not be pursuing it as a career if there was something else that made me as happy.

With all this being said, I would also like to mention that regardless of every external factor we can still choose to be happy. If I was to dictate my happiness, like so many do, on the amount of acting jobs I was getting or how great everything was all the time, I would be on an endless roller coaster ride. Instead I have the choice to decide how I want to see the world and decide how happy I want to be.

Things in our external environment are not always going to be as great as we might hope, in fact there will be times where things can get down right shitty. But if I wake up every morning knowing that I can control my reactions to these things then it doesn't matter how bad things get. Of course there will be times when I will give into my reactions and allow myself to be low, there are certain events that would require no less... but if I can pick myself up at the end of that and continue on then there is no option but for me to succeed.

In life like attracts like. I notice every time I decide to be happy, regardless of how many jobs I am booking (or for the last year not booking) a whole slew of positivity gets directed back at me. I find myself smiling more and living life to its fullest in each moment. I  control what I can and let the Universe figure out the rest. The amazing part is that if we stop over analyzing every small detail and just have the faith that things will turn out the way they are supposed to magically things will just start falling into place, and in a way that we could never have imagined.

My time will come for an abundance of acting success and that will be a great moment in my life, but I can still be happy in the meantime. I can still find the joy in my everyday "normal" life. I choose to be happy and I encourage you to do the same.