Hello, beautiful warrior! I’m Sui Solitaire. My name is pronounced sway, and I love you!

I’m honored to be here, and grateful to Jenn for asking me to be a part of this wonderful tribe and gathering of love and light.

I am a writer, artist, and entrepreneur. Most importantly, I love– myself, you, the world, life!

I share my journey to inspire warriors and revolutionaries like you to live their dreams and do what really matters. I also write and publish poetry and non-fiction books and capture the way I see the world: as love!

If you don’t already know of cynosure, where I do some of the work most important to me (though all the work I do is important to me, really!), please stop by! You can also receive free gifts and letters from me– and get goodness from the blog in your inbox!

I’m also working on some awesome creative artsy-fartsy projects this year (like handmade poetry anthologies and photo projects), so if you’d like occasional updates on that, you can sign up here!

I love veggie burritos, human beings in all of their perfect imperfection, and learning to let go. And, of course, you! ♥

I sleep in New York City, most nights– for now. If you’re ever in town, please let me know and say hi!

You can find me on Google+ and Twitter, the latter of which I have a love/attempt-to-quit-every-few-months relationship with. Say hello anytime!

I’m so happy to share this space with you, and I’m definitely grateful to be alive.

DEFY. RESIST. REVOLT.

DEFY.

Defy yourself. Defy yesteryear. Defy everybody’s expectations except your own. Defy the herd. Defy groupthink.

Defy what you thought yesterday. Defy what you believed this morning.

Defy the system– ANY and EVERY system, regardless of what it is, that tells you you need to be a certain way, any way other than what you want to be.

Wear your hair as short or long as you want it.
Wear make-up. Or don’t wear make-up.
Smile at strangers. Or don’t.
Dye and perm your hair.
Or don’t.

Be conscious of your choices, and make any choice you want.

Give the middle finger to beauty standards and love your body, no matter what it looks like. Because life is too fucking short and people die every moment of every day and there is not enough time in the world to waste on trying to adhere to an unrealistic and oppressive cookie-cutter standard aimed at keeping you more concerned about your appearance than how you’re contributing to the world.

Defy and choose. Choose to defy.

RESIST.

Resist internal and external violence, in yourself– your actions, and just as importantly, your words.

Resist suppressing your emotions. Resist shutting down. Resist closing your heart.

Resist letting the past dictate your present.

Resist letting tomorrow distract you from today.

Resist the need to cling, to attach.

Resist fear, and open to love.

Resist the myth that fear has to dominate.

Love is what’s most real. You are not your fears.

You are nothing, nothing, nothing but pure love, pure perfection.

REVOLT.

Revolution. Evolution.

Revelation.

Revolt against what we were taught we “had to” do. Revolt against shoulds. Revolt against external standards.

Being unapologetically, completely, and wonderfully yourself is the most powerful act of defiance, of resistance, of REVOLUTION.

Being yourself, doing what matters most to you, and refusing to settle or yield for anything less is the most powerful way to love yourself, inspire others, and fall in love with the world.

On the one hand, it sounds easy enough. “Be yourself.” How trite an expectation, how simple a demand– isn’t it?

Yet on the other, it sometimes can be damned difficult.

I encourage you to go slow. Yes, go slow!– in your journey of being yourself.

First, get to know yourself. Slowly strip away all the external expectations, the “shoulds”– even your own self-imposed “shoulds.” (Especially your own self-imposed shoulds! I find that they’re the most insidious, the most pernicious of all– particularly because you might believe them benign.)

What do YOU really want? What do YOU really need? What do YOU really enjoy?

What’s really best for you, for your life and your work and your body?

I find that my journey of self-love is all about self-discovery, self-knowledge. Love encapsulates everything: understanding, learning, realization, being, waking up. Epiphanies.

So I learn. I learn more and more about myself every day.

Okay: so it doesn’t work for me to stay at home and work alone, most of the time. I write with more fervor and passion and inspiration when I’m surrounded by people. Okay: so caffeine makes me kind of crazy, but sometimes it’s okay. Okay: so I don’t enjoy parties because I’m introverted. I’m going to respect that. Okay: so I don’t just desire or crave but NEED a support system. When I find myself in loss of one, I’m going to do my best to build one, to reach out and connect as much as possible. (This in particular has been pertinent to me as I just moved to New York City by myself, where I didn’t have any support system or family or friends.)

Every day, I learn and I learn and I learn. When I find myself uncomfortable, I ask myself why. I learn more about myself. Sometimes (often, actually, as evidenced by my solo globetrotting and moving around and across the country during possibly the most vulnerable time of my life) I challenge myself to stretch and murder my comfort zone. Sometimes I realize that what’s better for me, what I truly need, is to simply respect my present limitations. I’m gentle. I do my best, first and foremost, to be kind. My intention, always, is simply: love.

What really matters to you?

What really makes you happy: the myths we’ve all swallowed at one time or another (“perfect” house! “perfect” job! fulfillment disguised as the “perfect” romantic relationship with lots of money and an impossible body to boot!)–

or what’s truly important to you: the people you love, the relationships you have with friends and family, the contribution you give to the world, the little things, the little gratitudes, each morning you wake up and you’re in a functioning body and you’re alive?

When you’re with someone you love, what’s more important: checking your email on your smartphone or giving your true presence and full attention (what Thich Nhat Hanh considers to be the most genuine form of true love) to them?

Learn to let go.

Learning to know yourself, be yourself, and love yourself is all about letting go. Letting go of what you don’t need, letting go of the little ways attachment and clinging permeates your life with suffering and sorrow.

Slowly, with your grip on your shoulds, on who you think you are, on the identity and the words you use to describe yourself (and your body, your work, anything about yourself)– detach, finger by finger, and let go of the strings tying you down.

It takes time. I know. In fact, I’m not going to lie: it’ll take your whole life. (And if you believe in reincarnation, probably all of your subsequent lives, as well!)

But there’s no doubt about it:

Being yourself without apology is the most genuine form of defiance, resistance, revolution– and more importantly, self-love– that I know.

Guest post by Sui Solitaire for Oh, these Wild Women: Stories from the tribe

This is my squishy stomach, my cellulite thighs.

I’m squishier.

My thighs are thicker, my stomach rounder, my sides softer. My dresses are a little tighter, harder to squeeze into. I don’t wear pants much but it’s hard to find a pair that fits. I wake up and find that if I smile too hard at the wrong angle at my mirror image, my chin doubles.

When I contemplate the extra thickness in my thighs, I see clearly that I have a choice.

A choice to treat it as something foreign, as something that, even though on a part of me, isn’t a part of me.

Or a choice to see it as what it is, what it truly is.

I take my thighs into my hands and I feel them.

I feel how full of aliveness they are, constantly sparking with energy, with the evidence of life, the affirmation that I am here, I am here.

I feel how a part of me they are.

I feel how, though their size does not define me, their very existence shows how blessed I am: to have working legs, to have legs at all, to have the luxury of being nourished enough to fill my skin with flesh.

My stomach has creases from the fat rolls that will probably never go away. No matter what size I am, my stomach will probably be flabby, the skin loose and hanging, because of all the extreme size fluctuations I’ve gone through as a recovered disordered eater. No matter how small I may get, my stomach will probably still balloon when I eat too much salt, or eat a lot, period.

And it’s beautiful, the softness. It’s beautiful, the way it curves out and the way I look super-pregnant when I eat a lot. It’s beautiful, the way my digestive system, after so many years, reminds me again and again that it is reliable, that it will never fail me– no matter how many times I’ve failed it.

My skin, another survivor of my eating disorder, will probably always be loose, stretchmarked, scarred, and adorned with cellulite. Yet, it’s soft. It’s a survivor, not a casualty.

Contemplating my roundness, my softness, my warmth, I smile. I smile at my naked body, sometimes the skin between my legs sticks together because there’s no room, no space. I smile and I remember, I’m always remembering.

I remember that don’t need to believe the lies. The lie that because I look the way I do– that I look like myself, a real, live, warm human being– that I need to be ashamed.

I smile and I touch my skin.

I am alive. I am here.

And I will be bold, even though I see no reason that this should be bold. What I see is that this should be what’s normal– truly appreciating our bodies, inhabiting our bodies, and loving our bodies– no matter what they look like.

I will scream it in the streets if I have to.

I love my body.

No matter what it feels like.

No matter what it looks like.

Unconditionally.

I’m Sui (that’s sway) Solitaire. I write on cynosure about love, growth, presence, eating, and body image. I share my journey to help you on yours.

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DEFY, RESIST, REVOLT: Meet Sui Solitaire and join the damn revolution already