Colossal signs so I got lost, with so many lovers singing soft

 [Dane & Olga wearing Moroccan Gandouras by Kenza Idrissi Couture, www.kenzaidrissi.com]

It has always been a dream of mine to do a shoot in Moroccan fashion - who would have known I'd one day be in Morocco shooting for a lookbook.. there's something to check off my list! We wrapped the shoot in one afternoon, amidst a flurry of silk, curls and impossible-to-walk in high heels. What better place than Les Oudayas in Rabat to serve as a backdrop. The scenery is indescribable, and the clothes make you want to morph into something more deserving of its silhouette, like a goddess or a nymph. I was a bit nervous about doing the clothes the justice they deserve.. but after layers of black eyeliner and hours getting my mane curled into cork screws, one might actually be able to go as far as saying that I started to look a little bit like I could be Moroccan......

I know I have taken an unusually long break from blogging, but my god, where do I even start? It seems like the roller coasters have followed me even to North Africa. I'm not here to complain, but merely to acknowledge the brain salad of a message the universe is delivering me. My friends call it my "Eat, Pray, Love" phase, and tell me to go with the flow. But what when you have decided that you have eaten, prayed and even loved.. but that in the end you are left none the wiser? My girl Erica wrote a post a couple of years ago calling this phase "The Saturn Return", a period in your life reoccurring every roughly 28 years that serves as a time when you reflect on all things questionable in your life and as a turning point for everything in desperate need for a change. When she forwarded me the post, on a day when I was feeling particularly miserable, all sorts of lights went on as I made my way into the second paragraph. This was Me. Lost, tired and extremely vulnerable. I had already succumbed to the shortcut conclusion that maybe this was an "expected" consequence of (again) being suddenly single, and it hadn't occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this was something that nearly all people at this stage of their lives begin to feel.

Suddenly I found the strength I was longing for, so badly. I made a big decision, one that I could possibly regret someday, but one that just feels right, right now. I realized, the pressures that we feel society imposes on us, are pressures that we magnify with our own insecurities and multiply by our frustrations. It's no wonder we can't see clearly through our own eyes, when we are clouded by our own misgivings. My main downfall is always that I listen more to what others think I should do with my life than what my heart tells me it wants. As a result, its like my own voice was reduced to a mere whisper, and drove me into a state where I had forgotten who I was, and where I, as an individual, belong.

So here we go, Saturn Return, let's lock horns, and get down to business. I am weary, but I am not afraid. And least of all, I am not broken. And I will push my way through this. And I will turn this unforgiving bull of a burden, into ashes.

Challenge, accepted.