Kirra Donna – USA

My stark white body against the uninhabited pavement gave me the feeling of what one might call an apparition, as if I was watching myself, completely removed from the situation, like an objective onlooker. The stabbing pain in my feet from the cold cement was the only thing grounding me to reality. Each drop of rain that fell fatefully over my body caressed me, and I began to feel reinvigorated.

I had fallen out of touch with what I like to call the “magic,” for lack of a better word. I had come to a point where I saw “beauty” and felt nothing; I took on the characteristics of a machine, operating on automatic (which unfortunately is not so uncommon these days). A monotonous cyclical pattern had taken hold, and I fled.

I think when I met with Erica I had come unconsciously seeking a state of mind long gone; a mindset that appreciated the profoundness of small wonders; like a perfectly round stone or the only purple flower in a field of green. Magic.

I was visiting from Montana (and had come seeking Atlantis), so Erica and I had a short window of time in which to make everything happen, and her warmth and attention was well received.

At the point we met I was already quite at peace with my body and had no qualms about stripping down bare, which is more or less surprising after having gone almost the entirety of my life with what most people perceived to be an eating disorder. But that was never the truth.  The truth is I was and have always been a very skinny person and it has almost always been perceived as a weakness.

There are two sides to every spectrum. Some are born big boned, I on the other hand am naturally small. I think more than anything my decision to participate in the Embody Project was somewhat of a declaration to the all-that-is. Not that I was out to prove anything, but as I spun in circle after circle  it was as though I was screaming at the top of my lungs without making a sound.

I felt ALIVE and I was THANKFUL.

It’s funny to me how sometimes you have to leave in order to remember what you already knew.