What if our lives didn’t have to become achievements, announcements, or redemption stories before they were worthy of attention? This is an essay about being witnessed while we are still becoming.
The crows are picking worms from the freshly muddied grass as I wobble through my neighborhood park. My thighs are sore from pretending I was in shape for two hours of a modern jazz dance class. Lately, I’ve barely left my bed except for a two-mile hike. Then I spent one hundred and twenty long, beautiful minutes draping my body back and forth like a curtain flapping in the wind.
I used to dance throughout childhood. On stage, there was this addiction to attention that required no words— just me letting it all go and someone with their full attention watching, subtly agreeing that this is important.
One year I finally auditioned for the high school talent show. I tried to remember what the hell I did, but I still got up on stage before all my well-rehearsed peers and just let it all go again. After the performance, a few friends who also performed came up to me and said the exact same thing: “I didn’t know you had that in you.”
I smiled and pulled my normally forward-hanging shoulders back an inch. Me neither, I quietly thought to myself.
Yet, I couldn’t tell you anything else about this memory except that something came over me to perform, to create live with one hundred people watching me, to not care what they thought or expected, but to let myself be seen creating in the moment, let it be messy and fully expressed. There were nerves and sweaty palms, yes, but mostly this insatiable desire to be watched while I was mid-process with my next move and the song flowing together in some undefinable harmony. Sure, I had a base of ten-plus years of movement and dance training, enough not to make a complete fool of myself or, heaven forbid, faceplant, but in that moment there was this audacity that has thankfully never left me.
To be brave enough to live forever in the unchoreographed, unfinished, mid-process moments of life and demand that they are worthy of sharing with an audience.
So yeah, I was maybe a little wild to some, fearless to some; others could even say crazy—but that teenager is thankfully still getting a voice running the show of this one precious life of mine.
And I’m now finally done trying to turn my life and my experiences all into a marketable wellness practitioner code, and ready to finally talk to you about all the messy middles.
Like grief over my ex surfacing while on vacation in an epic national park—an ex who often told me he didn’t want to be with me, and how I stayed too long trying to prove I was worth his life—even though I now have an adoring man next to me who will follow me around the house just to stay in conversation while I do the one hundred things a mother does each day.
Like the fatigue that arrives randomly before a trip, my body asking yet again: Is it safe to experience this beautiful life without suffering when mostly what it has known is that goodness has a cost?
Like the joy of holding a friend while they weep and wishing I had more women who would hold me the same way, missing the mother who never did.
To keep sharing mid-sentence, mid-moment, mid-creation—so we can both bring light to the unachieved, unpolished, untransformed, and unhealed parts of our lives that deserve just as much attention as the finished memoir, the baby announcement, the cure, the wedding, or the job promotion.
I’m here to shift us out of a culture that celebrates only the finished and return us to celebrating the mundane magic of the middle.
So tell me, what’s the audacious, messy middle you’re here to celebrate as just as important as the finish?
For those of us still living in the middle
I write about the parts of being human that rarely make the announcement: the strange questions, private griefs, ordinary beauty, unfinished desires, and moments that matter before we understand them.
Join the Celebrate Again letters for new essays and artistic notes from inside the beautiful, unresolved middle.
Hi Love, my name is Lumalia Armstrong and here at Celebrate Again I’m exploring the messy middle of life, seeing how magical it really is and asking the questions some of us dare to barely whisper. I cannot wait to see you inside the Celebrate Again Letters.
You can also find my memoir Blooming Upside Down here, my work as a photographer, where I create ceremonies for the under-celebrated parts of the human experience, and the membership that lets you explore with your body’s wisdom leading.
Explore all the Luminosity Journal Essays. Luminosity Journal is a collection of essays, reflections, and poems exploring intuition, embodiment, relationships, creativity, and the deeper questions of being alive.
Philosophy, Beauty & Awakening
- Embracing the Messy Mundate Magic of Life
- Getting High on Life, Making it Hot Not Heavy
- Learning the art of Everyday Magic
- Ending Generational Trauma – A Poem
- Turning Pain into Power
- From Roses to Mary Magdalene: The Secret of Everyday Awe
- Living Life to the Fullest
- Eye Candy of the Northern Lights in Oregon
- Camellia Flowers & Spiritual Meanings
→ Explore all Luminosity Journal essays
