Validation is an inside job!

Story Inspired by the Kindred Project

Flash back to 1985. I'm in my last year of high school and I'm doing a photo shoot for my final Textile project.Its about undergarments making a fashion statement. Madonna + Cyndi Lauper are topping the charts and its all about the corset look....

it was an amazing year with an inspiring teacher.

Encouragement, validation and acceptance for my creativity and myself, is what I found in my Textile teacher. She stretched me and my ideas and challenged me to be more than I thought I ever could. She believed in me and I felt alive and awake, thriving in her presence. It was a time I believed in the possibility of everything and that everything was possible. That year I topped the state with my final year marks for Textiles.

The upside of this amazing year was a feeling of being filled and fulfilled, blissful in a time where I really needed to believe in myself and my direction … I was 17 and I felt I could do anything in the creative world.

However the Universe had some tough love lessons for me..

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find that full feeling of external validation for who I am and my creativity. Universal experience has been a firm handed teacher with many life lessons over the years. Looking back I can see how reliant I was comments from others about my art and how this shaped my direction, trying to seek their approval and acceptance for validation.

Finally I came to the realization that I’m not able to gain that fullness of validation from any other individual: not my parents, nor my partner, not my children, friends, university lecturers, clients or even strangers. I now know that relying on external validation is a gamble at best. True validation is definitely an inside job! It comes from doing the work, refining my skills, knowing I am doing the best I can at the time, with no comparisons to anyone else and telling myself “Well Done”. It’s a way I can fill my heart regardless of anyone’s opinion.

Truly I am grateful for what I learnt about myself in that year. My kind hearted teacher gave me a kick start in a life lesson about self validation. I got to feel how amazing validation is at its fullest, what huge achievements I can reach when I believe in myself and what I’m creating, and what happens when I stretch beyond what I think I can do. Thank you KB, you gave me a wonderful gift.