Are You Leaving Yourself Out of Your Own Story? | Reflection Room August Week 1

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When I think about reflection,

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I try my best to let go of ideas about quiet spaces,

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low lights and perfect conditions.

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As I'm recording this, my dog is eating and drinking really loudly

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in the background. So I often don't have the right conditions

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or the ideal conditions to do everything I want to do.

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And this is why I really believe that reflection can happen at a rock concert

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in a gallery.

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cooking supper or wandering the supermarket aisles.

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Although it would be lovely to have a room of our own and a quiet space

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to do some solid thinking. Psychologically speaking,

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we could probably divide reflective thoughts into the practice of reflecting,

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ruminating and mindfulness. And they all do different things,

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but I don't want to get too technical because actually...

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Research shows that it's not how much you reflect,

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but what you do with the insights that brings you the greatest of benefits.

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So one of the many ways in which the reflection room works is

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by taking that insight and moving it into action,

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often with a supportive and challenging nudge from somebody else

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in the reflection room. So here's your invitation to spend one hour this August

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in active reflection and to help.

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I've recorded four weekly prompts to support just 15 minutes

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of weekly reflective practice.

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It's as simple as listening to the audios and there will be some activities

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if you want to do them, but it's not essential.

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So I always pair reflection with art and I have put

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an image with the email that's gone out this week,

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which you will find described in this audio.

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So welcome.

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to the reflection room. This is a tasting tour for August if you've been curious

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about joining us. Every prompt is paired either with art or poetry or both.

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And the first artwork I'd love to share with you is by British artist,

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Coral Woodbury. So this is a portrait of another artist,

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Ljubljana Himid.

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And it's been painted directly into a page from something called Janssen's History

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of Art. Now, I've not read this.

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I've never even heard about it before today.

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But apparently, it's one of the world's most influential art history textbooks.

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I think all we need to know is that for decades,

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books like this have largely, you know,

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of overlooked women artists. So what Coral has done...

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she created a series called Revised Edition and she quite literally painted women

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back into the pages of these books where they should have been all along.

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I love this from a feminist perspective.

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And her inclusion of Ljubljana's Himmids work is really cool

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in my sense because her artwork covers questions such as who gets remembered,

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who gets represented and who's been deliberately overlooked.

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So she's painted Ljubljana onto a page about another artist called Francisco

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or Francisco Goya, who I've never heard of as well.

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And the idea here is that both artists challenge the stories that powerful

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institutions tell. So Goya's work,

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apparently, I'm going to have to go and look at this now,

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is often celebrated for looking beneath appearances.

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And he painted kings and queens,

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but he didn't always flatter them.

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And his portraits were supposedly revealing things like power structures

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and awkwardness that you'd see beneath the surface.

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I think in real terms, I'd think about modern day kind of photos of

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our royal family and how we like try to,

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we get people on social media who like try to break down the hidden meaning behind,

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I don't know, the way that somebody's walking or how things have been presented.

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It's probably something very similar.

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So, Ljubljana does something really similar with her own work,

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her own artwork as an artist, her works asking stories,

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asking whose stories have been left out,

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but particularly the lives and contributions of black people.

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And it invites us to think about the official versions of the past.

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But mostly though, I just loved the idea that Coral's idea for this series,

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didn't arrive in a studio or in a very quiet,

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thoughtful place. She spoke about how it came to her while she was walking

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in the woods. And I think that some of my best ideas come into me when

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I'm out and I'm kind of paying attention to what I'm thinking about,

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and that is reflection, rather than when I'm sitting trying to make something happen

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at my desk. So as I looked at this piece,

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I was thinking about the stories psychologically that we inherit and

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the stories we tell ourselves.

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and how actually they probably can be revised.

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So from a social identity psychology perspective,

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this artwork would ask, who do we see as belonging here?

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And the stories we see repeated in books and galleries do shape our ideas about

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who can be a leader or, you know,

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an expert in a particular area in social media,

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for example.

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So when people are left out of those stories,

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it also influences how other people see,

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but how we see ourselves. Carol's work,

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this revised edition then with this image of Ljubljana on top of the history book,

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is an invitation to kind of say who else's story is missing.

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And I thought you could do this as a reflection to think where is your story needing

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some revision? Perhaps.

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you've been overlooked or rejected.

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In fact, I can guarantee we've all been rejected for something in our time.

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But also, we're possibly guilty of leaving ourselves out

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of history or digital footprints because we might not go for something that

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we really want to do. We might think,

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~ that's not for me, or perhaps we don't feel we have the confidence to do it.

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Maybe you've had an idea that deserved to become a book.

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Perhaps you could be featured in a magazine or shortlisted for an award

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or exhibited somewhere or spoken about or speak on a stage.

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Sometimes we dismiss all of these things before anyone gets the chance.

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So this week's reflection is simply this.

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Where could your contribution be revised?

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And you know, you could take a broad brush to this.

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You could look in the last year or you could look across your career.

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and where have you become used to seeing yourself as a supporting cast member?

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And I don't want you to think of this as just like kind of wishful thinking.

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It's about, I suppose, noticing where your own assumptions might be sitting with

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the evidence. So if you'd like to take this reflection a little further,

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why not make your own revised edition?

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It could be a collage or scrapbook page.

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or even an activity you do with the kids.

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You know, you could ask them if you were a character in any book,

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which one would you be? And or,

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you know, for yourself, which magazine would you feature your work in?

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Which bookshelf would your book sit on?

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Which exhibition would include you?

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Which stage would have you as a speaker?

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Sometimes imagining ourselves in those places helps

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us notice the assumptions that we've been carrying about where we do and we don't.

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below.

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P.S. One of my favourite things to do is to share the things that spark

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my own curiosity because they often become the beginning of a new reflection.

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I discovered Coral Woodbury's work through a beautifully created collection

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by Maggie Hills for Art UK, created to support the 2026 GCSE art

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and design theme Women. It's a wonderful example of how following

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one interesting idea often leads to another.