“It’s all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all”
I have a complex relationship with my closet. It's a place that greets me each morning with the question, "Who will you be today?" It's a somber and celebratory catalogue of the many selves I have lived and hoped to live (maybe still secretly hope to return to). It's filled with greatest hits and one hit wonders alike. As women, I think our closet evokes a complex conversation with ourselves, a dialogue with the multitude of women that live inside.
This is what I like most about Anaïs Nin. Her writing gives you a front row seat to the fullness and complexity of the feminine internal life. While Nin published an array of fiction and poetry throughout her career, it is really the extensive diaries that she kept for over 40 years that best display her artistry.
Her diaries are complicated and controversial, even paradoxical which, to me, makes her all the more compelling and real. I think she was a woman determined to live her own life and to understand it as it emerges. I think it is a strong act to engage in the journey to know thyself and to lend that journey to others to witness and be inspired by. Now that’s style.
“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.”
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Dr. Michelle Harwell, PsyD, LMFT is an expert trainer, respected speaker, and licensed therapist in trauma and attachment. She is noted for her specialization in areas of development, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience, and her ability to communicate complex topics with clarity and humor. Michelle completed her PhD in Psychoanalysis from The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She received her BA in English Literature from University of Oklahoma, MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology.