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 former Victorian 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 and Sober Living by the Sea! You rocked it!