In Lieu of the Tattoo

As a kid, I couldn’t wait until I turned 18.  I had it all planned out.  I was going to the tattoo shop on Baltimore Avenue in College Park, Maryland to have a treble clef tattooed on my shoulder blade.  Or was it my foot?  Hmmm…Maybe it was my ankle.  I can’t remember, but back then, I was quite confident that I was going to be a professional musician and I wanted, correction, I needed to be inked to ensure that my goal was brought to fruition.

Evidence of tattooing dates as far back as the Neolithic era (9500 BC).  Historically, depending on the culture of the beholder, tattoos have served as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and/or marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and prisoners.  Tattoos even served as instruments of healing when applied to acupuncture points on the body in some cultures.  Regardless of the purpose of the tattoo, it is common that tattoos held great significance for those who wore them.    Now, in Western culture, tattoos have gained a great deal of popularity and are generally sought for cosmetic reasons and recognized as symbols for self expression and the attainment of enhanced beautification.  The decision to tat or not to tat is one that nearly every individual emerging from puberty in the millenium will consider in his or her lifetime, but does tattooing really make us more beautiful or make the symbol, photo or concept with which one is adorned any more significant in our lives?  Why so often are we apt to change the external to become closer to what we wish to be than the internal aspects of ourselves?  The obvious answer is that it’s easier, but is it really?  Let’s closely examine...

To get a tattoo, there are a number of steps that must be taken:

1.     Identify a good tattoo parlor or artist because no one wants a sloppy tat job.

2.     Choose a design with significance that one would be willing to see on his or her body every
        day perhaps for the rest of their lives.

3.     Be prepped for the application of the art.

4.     Have the design outlined with ink and (if the recipient can endure the physical pain at the time)
        have the design filled through the process of creating a wound beneath the surface layers of the
        skin and penetrating the wound with black or colored permanent ink.

5.     Endure physical (and possible emotional) pain and trauma associated with the tattoo for a short
        time period, treat the wound with a special ointment and work to avoid infection during the
        healing process.

6.     Finally enjoy the beautiful body art (well, at least we hope it turns out as beautifully as we
        imagined) you’ve elected to have etched onto your body.

7.     Maintain your art by re-inking, adding to it, covering it or having it removed.

So, there seem to be seven steps to undergo in effort to beautify ourselves through tattooing.  What stands out for me is the fact that in the process, one must be willing to endure a degree of physical pain and/or discomfort for days and in some cases even weeks and risk permanent scarring and/or infection.  This forces me to ask the question, in the name of inner beauty, why aren’t we just as likely to suffer the emotional pains of adjustment to shift our thoughts and habits from the unhealthy to the healthy?  To begin seeing positive change in our thoughts and actions, there are three simple steps (none of which involve any physical pain, unless you’re a masochist and find pleasure in the pursuits of physical trauma):

1.     Think a new, healthier thought.

2.     Believe that what you desire for yourself is a possibility.

3.     Take action that supports what you desire in your life.

Three.  Simple.  Steps.  So why not take them?   Good question.  People have the tendency to gravitate toward the familiar.  They are comfortable with predictable outcomes.  What they know, they understand, and they tend to seek to maintain this level of stability in their lives even though the very situations that they keep themselves pinned to, they often claim to loathe.  Very seldom do people elect to stretch themselves emotionally.  People have the tendency to believe emotional hurts are far more painful and less likely to heal than physical ones.  The truth is that emotional pain is far more controllable than physical pain.  Emotional pain can be resolved by simply choosing to change a thought.  That’s right!   You have a choice in the matter—to hurt or not to hurt.  You can choose to think in a way that is detrimental to your emotional and mental health or in a manner that supports its enhancement.  For example, in step one, I can choose to believe "I am unattractive and overweight" or I can choose to believe that "I am beautiful and fit."  Once the choice is made, I must then decide to believe (step two) that being beautiful and fit is a realistic possibility for me.  This belief can be supported by defining what beauty and fitness mean for me and identifying action words (verbs) that I can implement to bring to life the qualities of beauty and fitness that I believe are possible for me.  Once I’ve identified my verbs, I can take step three and begin to act in a way that supports what I wish to be in life, beautiful and fit.   This process requires the discomfort of adjusting to the process of breaking the cycle of habit (which may take a bit longer than it takes to be tattooed), but it allows for a lasting change that never wrinkles, droops, sags or fades with age or time.

So, rather than enduring the sadistic process of being tattooed to illustrate one’s beauty, you can choose to radiate beauty or whatever quality you wish for yourself from the inside out.  All of the qualities that you wish to exude can be illustrated by your decision to implement this three-step process.   Ultimately, the decision of what to do in lieu of that tattoo is yours.  What will it be?






A variation of this article was previously published in FACE Magazine's September 2010 issue.

Beware of the Jabberwocky

Beware of the Jabberwocky
August 2010

Recently, I had the pleasure of watching the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp. I was highly entertained by the humor and whimsy captured in the film and also by the interesting use of metaphors for the circumstances that occur in the wonderlands that we all call our lives.

Those metaphors forced me to examine those circumstances that brought forth challenges in my own life and the types of emotions that were driving them. In the film, the main character, Alice, fell into a hole and entered a fantasy land full of curious personalities and circumstances. The land was ruled by the evil Red Queen who had taken power over the land after winning a battle fought against her sister, the White Queen, after seizing the White Queen’s magical sword. Alice was lured to the land to assist the White Queen in regaining rule over the land, but the only way of doing so was to fight and conquer the Red Queen’s most powerful and fearsome warrior, the Jabberwocky.

Alice, intimidated by the size and notoriously known power of the beast, doubted her ability to face and ultimately conquer it. She was unable to see that her ability to do so lied purely in her desire, her thoughts and her beliefs in her own innate strength. Alice was willing and able to overcome a number of small victories throughout the film, one resulting in securing the White Queen’s magical sword and returning it to its rightful owner; however, when it came to her willingness face the Jabberwocky, she was fearful and did not believe she would be able to be successful in slaying it.

Ultimately, Alice gathered the gumption to face the Jabberwocky, and to her surprise, was successful in slaying him. The White Queen regained power over the land and everyone lived happily ever after.

Now, I realize that things in real life generally aren’t quite as whimsical, yet nonetheless, I was inspired by Alice’s courage and bravery, and was prompted to begin identifying the Jabberwockies that existed in my own life, and asserted that certainly others must be faced by their own gigantic, winged, fire-breathing beasts that keep them contained in cyclical patterns of negative thoughts, behaviors and outcomes by which they surely feel imprisoned.

I reached for my sword (in my case, a Swarovski crystal encrusted ink pen) and prepared for battle (on a leather-bound paper battlefield). I faced each Jabberwocky head on by carefully devising a plan to slay them through the power of my thoughts and actions. Each Jabberwocky was operationalized and I identified character traits within myself that would be necessary to develop to outsmart, pin, and ultimately slay the fearful creature. I developed affirmations to keep myself encouraged as the animal charged nearer and nearer to me with obvious intent to do me nothing but harm, and I carefully selected verbs that I would perform regularly to tackle the scale-covered fiend.

Putting my plan into action on a near daily basis has been a challenge to say the least. I haven’t yet slayed all of my Jabberwockies, and I’m sure that as I evolve in this life, I will encounter others, but I have found a great deal of pride, joy and fulfillment in witnessing the emotional and spiritual development that is taking place in my life by facing my monsters.

Through this process, I have concluded that all of our thoughts, choices and actions stem from two general emotions—-fear or love. Those that stem from fear generally hold us captive in patterns and situations that we generally deem negative while those that stem from love typically allow us to feel emotions that we consider positive. Either emotion can be healthy to a certain extent; however, too much of either can be to great detriment.

It is imperative as the masters of our own destiny to determine the source behind our emotions and to determine whether those patterns are propelling us in the direction we wish for our lives to go or if their impairing us and holding us hostage in unsatisfactory circumstances.

Having said all of that, I challenge each reader of these words to unearth, face and slay their Jabberwocky.

What in this life is standing between you and you living your Truth? What are you afraid of? Whether it’s not having the approval of others, having to be independent for the first time, losing weight, or taking a major risk of any kind—-whatever it may be, you must first identify what it is that is keeping you from catapulting yourself closer to your goals and becoming the person you wish to be. Figure it out and reach for your sword. With sword in hand and motivation in heart, we can begin together to determine the best way to slay your Jabberwocky.



Janell A. Morgan, MSW, LICSW, LCSW-C is a Psychotherapist/Life Coach/Mom/Aspiring Zen Goddess/Fitness Fanatic/Squeaky Clean Eater/Sister/Daughter/Lover/Friend who is passionate about helping others to reach their most amazing potential.  Janell operates a private practice in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.   Janell is soliciting readers who wish for her to respond to their most burning questions about life, love, spirituality and relationships.