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shioneh

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makeup's all off .. who am I?

a changing body and a changing soul

Created on 2004-11-23 20:54:26 (#5242425), last updated 2009-04-03

4,595 comments received, 4,413 comments posted

Permanent Account

756 Journal Entries, 247 Tags, 174 Memories, 100+ ScrapBook Files, 7 Virtual Gifts, 88 Userpics

Basic Info

Name:	glowing dancer
Location:	Glasgow, Scotland

Bio

I'm feeling a little

The current mood of shmee_ at www.imood.com

today

This journal is

friends-only

.

I use this journal for day-to-day expression, introspection, outpouring my emotions, posting of my photography, occasional dream analysis, random silly thoughts and philosophical musings and pretty much whatever else I am drawn to externalize. I use it in part to log and process my thoughts and experiences and in part to connect with others. This journal is an important part of my life because writing is the way I find most helps me process.

My goal is to try to be as open as I can be in this journal. Openness and honesty are extremely important to me and I'm trying to learn to be honest and open with myself and others. I took a few steps back with trusting others recently and I feel I'm back at the beginning of the growth curve again, but the end-goal is still the same.

This was originally created as a recovery journal for my eating disorder. I've come a long way in my eating disorder recovery and I consider myself more or less recovered, which is amazing to be able to say.

In recovery, I started to feel that recovery is not just about overcoming the symptoms of the ed. I believe we're all at various stages of healing ourselves - We are all recovering from something. We are seeking to recover a less hurt, more fierce, hopeful and intense version of ourselves that existed before we started so called 'growing-up'.

"You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all. The woman wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to truly see her"
-- Naomi Wolf, author of 'The Beauty Myth'

Another thing I started to crystallize in recovery is my belief that there is no such thing as a body flaw and this journal follows me through my journey to love myself as is. I believe in health at every size. This an important belief for me and has changed the way I perceive myself and others. However, I do still go through ups and downs in my ability to apply this to myself.

"I'm sensitive and I'd like to stay that way" -- Jewel

Snapshots of me: I have a passion for self-expression of any variety. I love philosophy and love debating. I love animals and plants! I love the wildness of dragonflies and horses. I have a strong, recently discovered connection to orcas. I love storms and having my hair whooshed round in the wind. I adore the seasons. I relish the spring and summer months most of all for their heat, their light and eruption of new life. But I appreciate autumn's colors and magic. I love lighting candles in the winter and being cuddly. I am calmed and healed being around plants and animals.

I'm often shy at first but when I'm eventually comfortable with someone, I can get quite animated and energetic. As this userinfo suggests, I am really quite wordy. I adore metaphors and analogies. I am intense but I'm also playful. I favour one-on-one or small group interactions over large gatherings. I love spending time with people but personal space and processing time is also important. I can remain quite entertained by myself but when I'm vulnerable I have a tendency to withdraw and make my world smaller in protection which in the long-term is quite damaging to me because deep down there is an intense desire for connection and people in me.

I love photography, in particular, I love self-portraiture and photographing people and animals. I post quite a lot of photos in my journal. I usually score as an INFP.

Reason and emotion are both extremely important to me. I love my spirituality and I also love science. I don't see the two as necessarily clashing. My spirituality is my own blend. I believe in a responsive universe and connectedness and I am influenced by paganism and animism amongst other things.

"If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution," -- Emma Goldman.

I cherish stories, ups and downs, emotional journeys, music, seeing beauty and other such 'colours' of reality. I don't want to melt away all the colours of subjectivity but I do want to choose the ones that resonate with me.

On a less abstract note, I'm interested in health and slowly working towards getting fit again. I like learning about and eating healthy food. I have an intense love for homemade soup. My other favorite foods are meals that can be made in a wok, meals that involve prawns, traditional thai food, tapas and also tex-mex food.

I was born in England to English-Irish parents but I grew up in Belgium which is where my heart feels most connected. I'm currently living in Glasgow and visit Belgium lots. In some ways I like the traveling but I pine to stay in one place sometimes mostly so that I can share my life with an animal companion. I feel a connection to Earth as a whole more than I do to any one specific country of it. I live in a small apartment with my amazing partner, Nick who I've been with since 2003. I started studying at the University of Stirling but I suffered a breakdown-of-sorts in my first year and I ended up taking time out of studying and cutting myself off. I think it was important for me spiritually but I'm still unpacking some of that which is quite raw. I've just started as a first year Philosophy and World Religions student at Glasgow University.

I am anti-porn - the short answer as to why is because I believe it perpetuates many lies about both genders, and those lies get in the way of true connection and understanding between people. That said, I am not against sex in general or necessarily against kinkiness. My body is female but I consider my true self to be without gender. I believe the core in all of us is genderless. Partly because of that, I'm bisexual/pansexual. I don't fall in love with genders, but people. In principle, I believe in the beauty of both monogamous and polyamorous committed relationships but personally, I am monogamous as that is what feels right for me and my partner.

Sometimes, my journal will feature artistic nude photography. I think nudity is beautiful and natural and isn't automatically linked to sex in my mind. Any nudity in my journal will always be behind and lj cut and nudity will not be of a sexual nature.

Even though I am more or less recovered, I still intend this to be a safe place to write about it if I need to so please only add me if you are comfortable reading about eating disorders.

My boundaries: My most important boundary regarding my journaling is that I believe whatever I feel I want to journal about is right for me. I respect a person's decision to stop reading my journal if they no longer feel it is right for them to read it but I don't appreciate being told I write about [x] or [y] too much, for example. I may write the wrong things to suit one person's needs but whatever wants to come out has to be the right thing for me to write about and that has to come first. I mention this mainly because self-censoring has been a big issue for me in the past and I'm looking to overcome that :-)

I really truly love receiving comments, they make me feel connected and I love hearing other people's perspectives. I also believe people, including myself, comment when and if they are able.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." --Plato

I do believe that everyone is fighting a hard battle and I believe that we are taught to cover up the resulting pain and this 'covering up' impedes us from healing from it. I am trying to take the cover off my pain. I believe in growth and trying to overcome hurdles but I also believe feeling and experiencing pain is an important part of growth; for this reason, I am not open to adding people who believe that to feel and express pain freely is to be weak.

I believe in facing and exploring pain but I don't believe that makes me a negative person. I see myself as an optimist. I want to find solutions and grow through my pain.

I am looking to add people who are passionate about life and are eager to grow, learn and give and receive support. I am especially interested in meeting creative, curious and expressive people with an enthusiasm for openness and understanding.

---[my connections]---

physical form: [five foot three] [creamy pale] [very voluptuous] [curvy] [goddess bellied] [stretch-marked fire belly] [naturally muscular] [lightly freckled] [dark] [wavy firebrown hair] [long-haired] [charactered eyebrows] [small mouthed] [slim lipped] [mossy golden eyes] [small wrists] [small artist hands] [strong legged] [warrior calves] [foresty] [earthy] [fiery] [intense yet subtle] [pixie] [hobbit-elf]

sensations: [running in a storm] [crunching autumn leaves] [running my hands against tree bark] [dipping my feet into the water] [wind against my face] [wind playing with my hair] [light rain speckling down on me] [smell of tobacco flower] [the sound of the harp] [the sound of the piano] [stretching] [barefoot in the grass] [sun in my face] [basking in the warm sunlight] [being upside down] [falling] [warm skin] [crunchy soft velvet] [having my hair stroked slowly and softly] [head massages] [eyebrow strokes] [a cat's breathing by my head] [cuddling heart beats synchronized]

locations: [old places] [woody places] [museums] [pubs] [libraries] [churches] [abbeys] [ruins] [old towns] [winding roads] [places of learning] [attics] [buzzing places] [markets] [festivals] [concerts] [natural places] [forestland] [fields] [foots of hills] [valleys] [botanic gardens] [parks] [overgrown backyards] [cottages] [my family's living room] [virtual/cerebral places] [the internet] [steampunk universes] [fictional worlds] [dreamed worlds]

colours: [ametrine violet] [vivid violet] [crimson red] [periwinkle] [watersilk green] [forest green] [dark emerald green] [emerald black] [pine green] [spring green] [iridescent blue] [aqua teal] [pure white] [ivory white] [soft cream] [soft dusky pink] [silver grey] [sunlight gold]

animal affiliations: [orcas] [horses] [deer] [dragonflies] [owls] [snow leopards] [lions] [domestic cats] [thomson's gazelles] [sea turtles] [meerkats] [rabbits] [octopuses]

gemstones & crystals : [rainbow moonstone] [citrine] [ametrine] [opalite] [amber] [garnet] [amethyst] [labradorite] [aqua aura] [opal]

possessions: [my livejournal] [my canon eos 400 D and lenses] [my runes] [my favourite clothes] [art supplies] [art journal] [my jewelery] [semi-precious stones]

music: [silversun pickups] [shiny toy guns] [sleeping dog] [azure ray] [placebo] [kate havnevik] [explosions in the sky] [sigur ros] [t.A.T.u.] [butterfly boucher] [jewel] [goldfrapp][the killers] [ladytron] [client] [the weepies] [ingrid michaelson] [aimee mann] [laura veirs] [sia] [susan enan] [sarah mclachlan] [roisin murphy] [felix da housecat] [underworld]

films, t.v. shows & games: [six feet under] [lost] [in treatment] [house m.d.] [bones] [garden state] [the matrix trilogy] [spirited away] [howl's moving castle] [i heart huckabees] [the golden compass] [the chronicles of narnia] [the sims 2] [the zelda games]

deviantart · facebook · flickr · last.fm · amazon wishlist · etsy wishlist · dreamwidth · dreamjournal · twitter · tumblr · 43things . myspace · my curvygirls posts

If you know me in person and have not been invited here by me, please respect my boundaries and stay away from this journal.

Please do not post invitations to rating communities in my journal.

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Interests (150):

abnormal pyschology, acupuncture, aesthetics, agnosticism, alphonse mucha, anarchy, animism, anorexia nervosa, anthropology, anti-advertising, anti-porn, barefoot, barn owls, being around trees, belgium, believing everyone is sacred, bertrand russell, biology, bisexuality, botany, bubblebaths, cause and effect, charles rennie mackintosh, compassion, connecting, contortionism, creativity, crete, critical thinking, crystal renn, cuddles, curvy, curvygirls, curvylution, daring expressive make-up, death, deer, depersonalization disorder, determinism, dissociation, doodling, dragonflies, dream analysis, drunken conversations, ed-nos, ee cummings, embracing emotion, emotions, empathy, english, escher, evolution, extraterrestrial life, faeries, fat feminism, feminism, feminist literature, flourishing, forests, frank frazetta, free speech, frida kahlo, glasgow, greece, greys anatomy, growth, hannah, harry potter, haruki murakami, having my bum stroked, hayao miyazaki, health, hearing and being heard, honesty, horses, html, hundertwasser, imagining new creations, infj, infp, intellectual conflict, intp, kate dillon, kindness, kinky, learning to love myself, livejournal, lost, love, lucien freud, margaret macdonald, metaphysics, methods of expression, mia tyler, naomi wolf, national geographic, neulander, new scientist, non-violent communication, not giving in, nudity, optimism, orcas, paganism, parks, personal identity, philosophy, photography, picnics, placebo, plus size models, positive thinking, prayer, psychology, psychotherapy, purchasing gifts, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, radiohead, reading the dictionary, receiving livejournal comments, recovery, respect, sea horses, seasonal affective disorder, sexual fantasies, sigur ros, sloofs, sociology, soup, space, spirituality, stephen law, summer, sunshine, surrealism, talking to strangers, the beauty myth, the law of attraction, the young ones, totem animals, traditional chinese medicine, travel, true-self, truth, unconditional self-love, updating my livejournal interests, visualization, writing letters, zoology

External Services:

	shioneh@livejournal.com
	glowingdancer
	shmeekaboo
	shionha

Schools:

Ecole de la Sainte Famille - Brussel/Bruxelles, Brussel/Bruxelles, Belgium
University of Stirling - Stirling, Scotland - Stirling, United Kingdom (2006 - 2007)
University of Glasgow - Glasgow, Scotland - Glasgow, United Kingdom (2008 - present)
Open University - Milton Keynes, England - Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom (2008)

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