Can We Consider Beauty During Wartime?
One beautiful answer. These are the questions we explore in the salon. Join us: October 19, 12 - 1 pm PT | 3 - 4 pm ET
Dear Beautiful Friends,
Join us for the next monthly Beauty Hunter salon: Thursday, October 19, 12 - 1 pm PT on Zoom. Come ready to explore, I’ll bring a topic—if you have one, bring it. Free to subscribers.
This week, during the current Beauty of Uncertainty salon, our group considered this question in light of the recent Israel-Hamas war:
When uncertainty is being experienced by family members wondering if their loved ones are dead or alive, can we still consider beauty?
It’s easy to be fair-weather beauty hunters, but what we really want to do is explore the dark corners of the human experience to see if, where, and how beauty throbs on in the worst of times.
I’m going to share with you what one salon participant said about finding beauty when you know humans are suffering, when you are suffering, and especially when the suffering is happening outside of your own experience.
I find beauty in the stuff that we carry collectively. When we think about the collective, and see fear or stress not as My fear and My stress but as The fear, The stress, it gets lightened because it’s being shared. I think there’s beauty in that. It’s often difficult for me to find beauty in the stuff that I carry in myself . . . and when I think of suffering that’s happening someplace else, which is much greater than my suffering, I think about the collective experience and it makes me think that this is life, and this is the experience of being alive, in all of its good and bad, and that is beautiful because we’re here for a short time, so experiencing any of the human emotions, as unfortunate as they might be, is a beautiful aspect of being alive. - A.B., salon participantWhy a salon, what’s a salon?
Talk about capacity expansion. What do you think, how do you turn toward beauty (do you?) during the darkest times?
About the Beauty Hunter Salons
I started the Salons for Beauty Hunters two years ago, because it was something I’d always wanted to do. Partaking in big deep juicy personal communal philosophical conversations about being human has always been my Thing. The first salon ran for eight weeks, in the fall of 2021, and a dozen of us hunkered down in the early dark hours of 7:30 am, on Zoom and considered everything Beauty could possibly be.
This past year I started offering monthly “pop-up” salons, on rotating topics, free for paid subscribers (currently open to all through November, my birthday month). The next one is Thursday, October 19, 12 - 1 pm PT. Topic is open, and we can talk about what feels most pressing to the group, or show up and I’ll get us rolling.
What the salons continue to make crystal clear is how much an open, exploratory conversation changes lives.
Participants sometimes send me emails months after a salon telling me a story about a new capacity to slow down in the middle of a chaotic family situation and see beauty in the V of birds taking flight in the western sky. I’ve experienced big shifts myself salon after salon, topic after topic.
During the Humor, Play & Fun salon, I found myself feeling about as light and playful as a boulder. This is going to be hard, I thought, seeing the irony but not laughing. Halfway through the eight weeks, the idea of “play” expanded, and it became more than the sporty-saucy-sassy idea of play, and became a lusty and immediate urging from the World to engage with it, in any way possible. Now, as I sit at my desk on a dark October morning, two years after the first salon, I look outside at the majestic Western Red Cedar, Elephantina, and imagine everything Out There shaking with desire that I ENGAGE. Be In Life, Elephantina whispers. The playful nature of life wants us IN IT.
And join us next week at the Thursday salon. Show up ready to explore and share ideas, converse—I’ll bring a topic starter. XO
If you need to talk, process and turn darkness to light: How do we live in this world, right now?
I’m not only a beauty hunter, I’m also a coach who works with people in the area of creativity, possibility, and change.
If you’re struggling to make sense of life and humanity in light of recent events; if you’re wondering how to process it all, or understand how to hold everything and DO LIFE, be in life, to even consider beauty at a time like this, I hear you, I am you. I’m currently offering single drop-in coaching conversations, discounted for BH subscribers. One hour, all yours, to consider what’s possible even beyond what you’re willing to consider, even during times like this, in the midst of life life-ing, and humans human-ing. I’m here for you, tell me where you want to go.
NOTE: I will not be available for coaching from October 23 - November 16, but there are openings before 10/23 after 11/16. In the meantime, feel free to email me with any inquiries, I’ll love to hear from you.