Rewrite Beautiful Visits The Victorian And Sober Living By The Sea

The women of The Victorian and Sober Living by The Sea got
the opportunity to do a Street Art Workshop with Rewrite Beautiful this past
Saturday. The goal of the workshop was to creatively change how the women see
beauty in themselves.  The workshop was
kicked off with Rewrite Beautiful, Creative Director and Founder (and formerVictorian Support Staff) Irvina Kanarek (me!) who shared what Rewrite Beautiful’s
mission is and why prevention is so important to her. (*From my experience
working at The Victorian and seeing the gruesome toll eating disorders take on
people I want to be apart of prevention.)

Then  Janna, a woman in eating disorder recovery
shared her own story and what the Rewrite Beautiful mission means to her. The
meeting was then transitioned into a creative workshop. Sunny, an Art Professor
at the Art Institute of San Bernardino led the women through a creative
experience called, Mind Mapping.

Here the women learned how one thought can
rapidly turn into another. The mind mapping was then transitioned to 3, 3 x 6
foot wooden panels where the women explored their thoughts and emotions around:
Beauty, Recovery and Victory. I guess we could call this “Beauty Mapping”.

Each
time someone wrote out their opinions on Beauty, Recovery and Victory they
ended with a foot print to symbolize the journey we are all on trying to attain
these things. The next person who built on the previous persons though added another
foot print to the existing foot print making one pair of heart shaped foot
prints symbolizing the journey we all embark on together.

After the mapping the women read aloud what the others had
written about the subjects. Their statements were powerful and a sense of struggle,
pain, seeking and at times triumph was felt.

Then the panels were flipped around allowing the women to
creatively draw, paint and spray paint any visions they received from the
workshop.

The workshop ended with each women being given a Rewrite
Beautiful bracelet with our vision printed on it: “Creative + Kind + Strong = Beautiful”.
The hope is that these women remember that their participation in this workshop
was beautiful actions on their part. They took the time to be creative, kind
and strong in order to change their mindset on beauty and hopefully their
opinions about themselves will rub off on their friends and family.

Thank you to all of the Rewrite Beautiful  volunteers for visiting The Victorian andSober Living by the Sea! You rocked it!