Read me Right

People say that they can tell how you feel just by observing your body language and by your facial expressions. There are even studies that go deep into the connections between humans and their personas.

Typically, a smile equals happiness
                 a frown equals dissapointment or sadness

Etc. Etc. We've learned these things growing up through our childhood years through observations and experience. This was when our emotions were raw and untouched. An open book eagerly searching for someone to read us, yelling to the world, "Understand me! See how I feel."

I admire, and sometimes envy, how children so openly show their emotions without the thought of someone judging them. They normally do not care. A few hours ago, my 4 year old neice, Christal, called me all the way from Jacksonville. She has a sore throat. Her mother was trying to get her to gargle salt water to help soothe the burning. Christal, being ignorant to the thought of salt water helping her, was puzzled. She was questioning her mother with the look of disbelief, and she insisted on calling me to see if I knew that this crazy idea of warm salt water would actually help her. Of course she refused to do it until she spoke to me to gain reassurance, which I gave her.

I think this was amazing. I love how she had the boldness to question, and reveal the thought that she did not agree, all the way down to the expression on her face. I hope she always has the unction to be bold. This is the boldness that we all had as children. We cried aloud when we were upset no matter where we were. We laughed when we were happy. We questioned, we disagreed. But what I have noticed, is that as we grew older, we developed the capacity to understand when people judge us, and we do not like it.

The result? Well, we hide our emotions. Suddenly, it's not ok to cry and let people know of your grief, or whatever you are going through. It has now been looked down upon when we disagree with the majority, and we tend to accept this new found idea. Am I saying that we should revert back to a state of transparency? Of course not. The thought that I am eluding to is that we should not fear every ones judgement over OUR lives. Don't let people judge you for feeling a certain way. Be free to express your self.

Sometimes your emotions are not worth hiding. You end up wasting too much energy, because believe it or not, The pain that you sometimes hide behind that smile is visible to the ones who love you. They can see it. These are the people who know you and want you to be real and almost child-like with them.

This past weekend, Envisionary did a photo shoot with three beautiful ladies.
Joselyn Hudson, Maysa Joachin and Mikayla Murphey. It was a fun day. I enjoyed their transparancy with our photographer, Brandon Cunningham, and myself. I truly appreciated how they let us capture the essence of their emotions with our camera, and I hope you do as well.

Until next time my peeps.

Joselyn Hudson

             

Maysa Joachin

  Mikayla Murphey