A post came up on my Facebook memories today and it made me feel grateful for social media because this feels perhaps even more important today than in 2019 when this conversation occurred.

Feb 17th, 2019

Yesterday I had a client that I got into a deep conversation with that is doing her dissertation on the idea of personal sovereignty in which she described sovereignty as being a responsibility to the land & community, not a right to power or rule. We ended up speaking for an hour after her session about these thoughts and she brought up the idea of change and that real change comes from new ideas pushing forward rather than the breaking of old bad ideas. I think this is really powerful. We often can’t fight someone’s ideals especially ones they’ve grown with… but we can preset new ones and offer community within it.

We spoke about masculine & feminine energy working together to bring balance. We noted that masculine & feminine energy do not belong to genders and are within each of us and the imbalance we see as a whole with toxic energy is an imbalance within people not giving their whole selves a voice.
So many thoughts on all of this. So many things to give voice to. This short little trip to SF has been soul enriching and full of mindful reminders that sometimes I need only to stand where I am to find joy.

I’ve been in a mood to write lately but find myself having too much to say and not knowing how to present it, or being unsure in what I say because so much of my world view has been changed through the last few years. And seeing this post pop up today was a delight because I remember this conversation so clearly. And I remember when I wrote this feeling like I really understood it all. And now I realize how much I still had to learn. How much I still have to learn. Progress.

It also made me remember the period of my life when I was working for a boudoir photo company & traveling a bunch. It was a tough period in my life. I have found gratitude in it all, though sometimes I still shudder to think about how much work I was taking on just to feel okay. Sometime in 2015 I had decided to go full time with photography and quit my job. I began working for a boudoir company to ensure I could make ends meet and that entailed me traveling to different cities once, twice, maybe three times a month and photographing anywhere from 10-25 women in a just few days. It was difficult work. Photographing boudoir often means you must hold a great deal of empathy, compassion & love and when photographing 8 people in a day, 3-5 days in a row… I was tapped out very often. During the early days of this transition into my career my ex and I broke down and our marriage broke down with us. The grief surrounding the loss of this core relationship in my life was profound, but it happened alongside the loss of an incredibly important friendship as well so my grief was doubled and the uncertainty I had in life felt all consuming.

Looking back on this period I feel grateful because I learned I could walk into pretty much any space and create with whatever light was available and it made me a more confident photographer. I learned how to photograph so many body types, so many different styles and preferences, how to work with so many different personalities. Each trip was incredibly exhausting for me and often I’d head back home to a full schedule of my own clients.

During this time I learned my level of resilience while going through a big upheaval in my life and I learned how to create a new pathway for myself. Before I went full time with photography I was very scared to quit my job which was very comfortable in a lot of ways and terribly uncomfortable in many others. I simply knew I wasn’t doing what I wanted to be doing and it was not right. Taking the leap into full time photography was UNCOMFORTABLE but woah did it feel right despite the challenges I was encountering both in learning how to run a business but also with learning how to live life on my own again. Running a business comes with so many other challenges though. I learned I could hold myself together in tough situations, but I wasn’t the most pleasant person to many people during that time. I was ungrateful of the help being offered because I wasn’t sure what I was doing and I was all prickly skin and full of distrust around the intent others had. I am prone to quick defenses and my defenses at that time presented as anger and irritation. I learned I needed to gain more communication tools and boundaries in professional AND personal settings. I have been working diligently to do so over the years. Progress.

During that time I learned I could travel alone which was something I had never done before really. In fact, I may enjoy that form of travel the best. I also learned how devastatingly lonely it could be to sit in an airport for 8 hours with no control over travel or life situations while going through the devastation of divorce. And subsequently I found how important comfort dogs in airports are when you’re openly weeping about the loss you’re enduring around strangers. And the only form of comfort or acknowledgement of my pain came from a big ol golden retriever putting his big beautiful head in my lap and his handler allowed him to stick with me for a good 20 minutes before gently saying I hope whatever you’re going through becomes healing. (*sobs at the memory*) It did become healing. Eventually. Progress.

I also learned how to rebuild. How to traverse new pathways, new relationships. During that time I met my now husband, Jordan, & learned how to rebuild trust, how to communicate more effectively & how to love again. I learned a lot about myself during this time.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past few years too. I have a few tattoos on my arms now. One that has one person saying “you’ve changed” and another person saying “I’d hope so” in return. And it’s a constant reminder that change is painful and difficult and often feels out of control but eventually that change will just be a part of me, and I’ll learn to love that piece of myself too. I have a tattoo that says Be Courageous as a reminder to stand tall in my values. I have a Rupi Kaur poem that simply says “i am loving myself out of the dark”. And a tribute to our sweet dog Piper that we lost in 2020. “Keep shinin tiny star”. All of these pieces of me run deep and I am grateful for the reminders these words give to be true & strong in the meaning of them.

I have gone through many forms of photography, many jobs, many pathways since I started this journey nearly 13 years ago now. Photography has been a constant during that time, whatever shape it took in my life and it’s incredible thinking back on all the life experience & knowledge I’ve gained by being true to myself. I am so pleased to know this is the life I’ve been creating, to know that this life I chose so many years ago is one that is very full, very content in so many ways.