Never Wake Sleeping Dragons

It's over eight years since I first posted these photos on my original blog. Since then I've become a mum twice more, to a now four year old girl and a two year old boy, and all through that time I've suffered heavily from postnatal depression and while I've always had serious body image issues, suffering from an eating disorder as a teenager and disordered eating and body dysmorphia since, I've become more and more deeply unhappy with how I feel and look. Up until my last pregnancy I was still posting regularly. Whilst pregnant with my youngest I was still taking weekly outfit posts documenting my pregnancy and how large baby was compared to a varied assortment of fruit and vegetables, like I shared during my previous pregnancy but I had become so unhappy with how I looked that I could barely stand to have them taken and would become more depressed and feel sick at the thought of them and couldn't even look at the photos let alone share them. Some of them still sit unseen on my laptop. My posts just petered out. It's so long since I've been anywhere near happy that I find myself now feeling completely lost. I don't know who I am. Who I want to be. What direction I want to take. I've found I'm not looking after myself, mentally, or physically. I stopped trying to express myself through my style because I felt like there was nothing there to express. And the less I looked after myself the less I wanted to look after myself. The days rolled into weeks and months and years. I feel stuck. My original blog feels like a space of walls and stagnation, of missed posts and guilt. Everytime I've sat down to start up where I'd left off I'd feel that negative energy barring the way, even though I know they're only imaginary barriers I've created in my own mind.

 

So here we are, a brand new space, fueled with only the energy I choose to breathe into it now. A place to start again. From the beginning. I'm planning on revisiting all my original outfit posts, experimenting with more creative editing, figuring out what I actually used to like wearing, what I didn't like wearing, what I do and don't like about my earlier posts, what I'd like to wear now, and hopefully build up some creative confidence to start blogging as I am now. It's thought provoking looking back; I was unhappy with how I looked then, having put on around a stone more than I'd like, now I'm looking back having put on a further three and being even more unhappy with how I look now would love to be as healthy and fit as I was back then. I still own this cardigan, and love it, and hope to wear it again. Same with the skirt. All the rest, I believe, has passed along to other realms, be it charity shops or recycling. There was a time I held on to everything but I'm learning to let go of more than I ever thought possible, not just materially.

I'm wearing:

Tee: gift from my parents

Cardigan: H&M via a charity shop

Skirt (old): Etam

Belt: unknown

Coat (old): H&M

Bag: handmade

Scarf: market

Tights: Wilkos

Socks: Tich's

Boots: Ebay

Knitted hair clip: handmade

Beaded chain (wrapped round wrist): thrifted

Beaded bracelet: thrifted

 

Photos taken by Tich

Photos first posted October 14th, 2012 here