Liz, over at Just Be. Love All. Live Life has created a wonderful photo journey for the month of May — an invitation to explore the idea, Who am I?, through the art of photography and reflection.

Just for the fun of it, I decided to sign on. There’s not really much to do to sign on, just leave a comment on Liz’s blog page announcing the ‘Photo a Day for the month of May’ event, and send a tweet or Instagram message to tell her you’re in. And then, every day, turn up, be present, be curious and alive to the question, Who am I?

I’m all in!

All of me. Not just fingers and toes, or lips and back of my neck. I’m all in. Committed to exploring who I am through a photograph a day that speaks to who I am in that moment.

May 1 was, All heart.  May 2, Wild and creative (though I thought afterwards it should be Wildly creative — but hey, that could be me another day this month!).

It’s a fascinating idea — to take a photo of yourself everyday that depicts how you are in that moment.

Last night, as I painted with my two painterly buddies, we laughed and joked about what we were in that moment, and then, I just decided to have fun. It was in the having fun that I realized — taking a photo a day of myself can be fun.

I always look forward to seeing the photo my daughter, Alexis, posts of herself everyday on her blog, The Wunder Year. She’s asked stranger’s, co-workers, her boyfriend, me and anyone around at the moment to snap the shot everyday since she began The Wunder Year on Jan 1. And the collection of photos she has is fun, fascinating and a great visual reminder of where she’s at in any given moment on her quest to fall in love with herself, without her credit card or eating disorder defining her. To accept who she is, exactly the way she is, without needing the crutch of shopping or the perils of disordered eating keeping her playing small.

In our busy, get it done, get it going, get it all now, world, it is easy to allow ourselves to be defined by what we have. Fancy cars, right addresses, big titles all become the benchmark upon which we measure success, ours and others.

Strip away the accoutrements of a modern-day life and the statement, “I am _______________” is harder to express. I am a mother. A daughter. A sister. An aunt. A friend. A co-worker. A neighbour.

Dig beneath the label and who are you really? What makes your heart beat, your feet skip, your mind expand, your lips smile, your belly laugh? What rocks your boat?

In her photo a day invitation, Liz writes, “the other thing that is important to me is the idea of living an authentic life… of being exactly who you are. because all of us are unique, beautiful, and wonderful… exactly as we are.”

Last night as I painted, I was exactly who I was in that moment. Wild and creative.

I threw paint. Dripped it. Lathered it on. I smeared and pushed and rubbed and scraped it all over the canvas. I let myself express my authentic self through the creative wilderness, untethered to the idea that I was defined by what I was doing. I wasn’t.

I was the act of creating. I was the wild freedom of being in the moment, of the moment, all the time.

I was me. Wild and creative. In that moment.

This morning, I am still me but this me is informed by those moments spent dripping paint upon a canvas. This me is informed by all the moments that preceded the last. When I stop to take a breath to capture who I am in a moment in the future, I wonder what I will be experiencing? I wonder how I will express myself. I can hardly wait to see!

I’ll be posting my photo a day throughout the month.

Why not join me, and Liz and her other blog followers who have signed on to be part of this adventure?

You never know what you may discover. You never know who you will reveal yourself to be within the moment of living your life in the rapture of now!

PS. Here’s a hint for my photo for Who am I? today. When I went back to proof this post, the statement, I’m all in, struck me as a great way to be. Now… to figure out a way to photograph myself in the act of living All In!  I’m looking forward to the adventure! Come back tomorrow and you can share in my discovery — and hopefully, share your own photo a day discovery too!

It was one of those wonder-filled days. Busy. Jam-packed. Enlightening. Filled with moments that blew my mind. Crammed with opportunities to explore the more that’s always out there.

The day included a tour of a family shelter that provides emergency care for 14 families. A conversation that expanded ideas into possibilities. A presentation that blew my mind on the power of data to inform decision-making. A panel discussion about ‘safe cities’ where I was one of three presenters to a group of 24 – 40 somethings engaged in making a difference in our city. And then, I painted.

Perhaps it was that I was inspired by the energy of the audience at the panel discussion. Or maybe it was just that throughout the day I kept encountering the expansiveness of possibilities everywhere. Or, perhaps it was just that I felt the call of the canvas inviting me to let go and create. Whatever the ’cause’, the process was divine — even when I decided that painting over one of my previous works was the only way to get it somewhere pleasing.

And so I did. Paint over.

Unlike life, paint-overs really do create possibility. They use what was to create a brand new what is…

Paint-overs rock.

My eldest daughter taught me that many years ago. If you don’t like it, paint over it, she advised me when she was sixteen and I had just begun to paint with her.

My dear friend Ursula had been at me for years to pick up a brush. An amazing artist, she kept trying to get me to join her in her love of creating beauty on a canvas. Don’t believe everything you think, she’d tell me. And I’d laugh and say, No thank you. I won’t like it. You’ll love it, she insisted.

I didn’t believe her.

Instead, I believed the voice inside of me that whispered, “You’re a writer Louise. Not an artist. You can’t paint. You have no artistic ability.”

Don’t you love it when you finally find the courage to prove the voice of self-doubt wrong?

One day, after Alexis had asked to go to the art supply store to pick up some fresh canvas and we’d returned home with canvas, paint and new brushes, I decided to pick up a brush. And fell in love.

Ten years later, I know how wrong I was. I am an artist. I do have talent. I can create! And on May 10 and May 11, I’m in my first art show and sale. How cool is that!

I wonder what else I tell myself I can’t do that really, if I just give myself a chance, I can? I wonder how many limits I set on myself just because saying, “I can’t” is easier than, “I can”? I can’t means I don’t have to take risks. I can’t means I don’t have to step outside my comfort zone.

I can’t keeps  me uncomfortably stuck in my ruts of self-doubt, limitations and inhibitions.

I can sets me free to fly, to explore, to be the more I’ve always dreams was out there waiting for me to become.

Think about it. Everyday we’re faced with opportunities to explore the unknown and everyday, we turn our backs on what is not known or unfamiliar to hold onto what is within the comfort of our known capabilities.

It may be human nature to fear the unknown, it’s also human nature to step into it and fly.

For today, invite yourself to step out of the known into something, new, unexplored, previously untried. For today, let yourself talk to strangers, take a different route to work, wear different coloured socks, pick up a paintbrush, give a speech, ask the guy in the cubicle two over out for coffee, phone the one you’ve been avoiding, say “I’m sorry”, ask for what you want, turn down a drink, turn up the volume and dance.

Let yourself go where you’ve never dared to go. Let yourself be who you’ve always dreamed of being.

Just for today, give yourself permission to do the things you’ve feared, to be the one you’ve always dreamed of being.

Just for today, let yourself fly.

Who knows what you might learn? What you might do? What you might achieve? And along the way, who knows how many limits you might break?

C’mon, just for today, go for it!

My mind is blank this morning. I wonder what I will write and no words, no thoughts appear. See, my critter mind hisses, I told you this would happen. You’ve run out of original thoughts.

Now, I don’t know why that thought immediately made me think of my Catholic upbringing, but it did. Perhaps it’s the idea of original thoughts which leapt to original sin.

It was the part of Catholicism that bothered me every day when I was a child. The doctrine teaches that I was born with ‘Original Sin’ and unless people prayed for me and I behaved and never did anything bad in my whole life, I was a) lost forever in Purgatory, or b) going to hell.

Neither seemed like such a good option. And, anyway, the God I envisioned was not that small minded that he’d sentence a newborn child to a place called Purgatory. Nothing I heard about the place was very appealing. The sun didn’t shine and there were no birds tweeting in the trees and no brooks burbling with joy as they rushed down tree draped mountainsides to join the mighty rivers flowing to the sea. Nope. Purgatory was not a place where any soul wanted to be trapped. Why would God want anyone to live there throughout eternity? In fact, as a child, I used to ask why would God even invent a place like Purgatory. It wasn’t a particularly good expression of His  creativity.

Though my inquiring mind did sometimes earn me a rap on my knuckles, no one seemed to have an answer to my question. Just as they never took me seriously when I asked where God lived from Monday to Saturday. If he was in church on Sunday, what happened to him the rest of the week? ‘Cause in my view, the world seemed to fall apart during the week and sure could have used a lot more God.

I still wonder. About Purgatory and where God is, but, I’ve let go worrying about what he’s up to and learned to express my own God-like qualities that reflect the creativity and divinity I want to see in the world everyday. It is true what Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I saw that change in action yesterday through the words of a man who has grown far beyond the sinful life of drugs and running wild he once indulged in, to be the kind of man he always wanted to be, kind, funny, generous.

When he was 51 John B. tried crack for the first time. That one puff on a pipe lead him on a 15 year odyssey into the depths of despair and the futility of a drug of which he could never get enough.

Yesterday, in front of 200+ grade 3’s to 6, I listened to him share his story. I come and tell you all of this, he told the wide-eyed children sitting on the gym floor of a local Catholic elementary school, because I want to open your eyes to what can happen. You don’t think it can happen to you, but it can. So if you’re ever presented with the choice, if anyone ever offers you drugs, or suggests you do something you know is wrong, walk away. Just keep walking away.

At the end of his half hour talk, after he’d expressed the sadness he felt in having lost all touch with his only daughter for the 15 years of that journey, a young boy put up his hand and asked, “How did you feel when you saw your daughter again?”

John swallowed hard and took a breath. “It was wonderful,” he said. “We’re not perfect together today, but it sure is better than it was.”

And I wondered about that young boy. What caused him to ask the question. What sorrow was he carrying.

Later, I learned that several of the students from this school are in foster care. The sad fact is that close to 50% of children in foster care will become homeless as adults. Perhaps, like John’s daughter, drugs have stolen this young boys parents from his life. Perhaps he wonders what it will be like when they return. Will he have a home of his own? Will he be safe? Will they want to be with him one day?

I hope that in John’s words he found some comfort, and strength. I hope that in hearing John’s story, and the joy he expressed in seeing his daughter again, he will hold that possibility close to his heart. That he will know, the sins of the parents are not the property of the child.

And I wonder if he is worried that this place called Purgatory is his life on earth.

I pray he knows differently. I pray he finds his truth. God knows, he deserves better.