I remember what it felt like to be excluded. To be picked last, even with the strongest kick in our whole class, including the boys. I remember how it felt to see my thin friends have crushes who liked them back. I hated myself because of my body and how others treated me because of it.

I felt like everything was unfair; that my diets and strict exercise regimens in my early teen years felt unfair. Why did I have to count calories and my friends could eat whatever they wanted? I did two workouts per day, including one right before I went to sleep every night, just to make sure I did everything I could to get my calorie burns in for that day.

A general hatred for myself turned into an obsession over my body, all the ways it was different than everyone else, and that obsession became a monster that created a decay in my physical and mental health.

This story probably does not sound unfamiliar, and if it doesn’t sound like your story, it may sound like a story you could hear from your sister or best friend or mom. This unfortunately common story is a product of our society, consumerism capitalizing on women who want to look like the photoshopped models in the magazines. Our expectations were unrealistic (an entire separate conversation) and our appetites were bigger than what we were allowed to show.

Out of highschool and into college, I still hyperfocused on my body, still larger than most of the people around me, but nowhere near the “morbidly obese” I truly believed I was. I continued to overanalyze the marks and changes of my skin and the way my arms would jiggle just a little bit. I blamed my body for every problem I had, and never gave myself a day off from the negative self-talk.

A friend I had in college had convinced me to start promoting weight loss products with her. We were all over our social medias together, hosting bootcamps, leading weight-loss groups, and telling people to “stop making excuses”. Not my proudest moments.

We had been at it for a couple of years when something changed. She was the first person to make the storm stop. She introduced me to intuitive eating. Listening to our body’s cues and following that instead of a restrictive and predetermined diet in a pamphlet from an MLM. It sounded like a vacation. I googled intuitive eating and I started learning.

Soon after, we both stopped promoting weight loss products and started digging into body positivity. I started challenging my ideas like “once I hit ___lbs of weight loss, then I can do ____.” Instead, I thought: What if I just did that thing now, in the body I currently have? What if I took a break from hating myself? What if I just tried loving myself for a minute today?

More learning came with more homework and more growth. Standing in front of a mirror, naked, saying nice things about myself. That was one of the first things I did. And do you know what? I didn’t mean a thing I said.

I wasn’t grateful for my tummy. I didn’t love the softness of my arms. I had no appreciation for the stories my stretchmarks told. But I stood there, and I said the things, and the timer went off, and I got dressed and moved on. The first step of a beautiful, never-ending journey.

Every time I stood in front of that mirror, it got easier. The narrative started to change. I began to see things with kindness instead of in disgust. I talked to my therapist about it. I wrote in my journal. I talked to my friend. We ordered fried rice with extra yum yum sauce and laughed and cried and were present, not worrying about how many calories we were scooping off of our shared plate.

One day, she texted me a meme. It said something to the affect of “I wish we had appreciated our bodies in high school the way we do now.” I replied with “we should do something to document how we feel about ourselves now, we’re only going to get older ya know”

She had done a boudoir session the year before for her wedding gift to her husband. I had been doing photography on the side for a few years at that point, so we decided to get all dolled up and take cute boudoir photos of each other to document our self-love. To document the power of the journey we had been on. To capture the feeling we had worked so hard to find.

Our plans to take pictures of ourselves turned into a women’s empowerment event, where I *very ambitiously* took boudoir photos of 13 women in 10 minute increments – boudoir micro sessions. My friend helped me pose each woman, because I truly had no idea what I was doing. (I mean, clearly. 10 minutes?! LMAO)

Despite whatever crazy notion had come over me to take that on, that day changed my life. I walked away from that event with a feeling I had never felt before. My soul was on fire. I had found my purpose. I figured it out. I needed, with every ounce of my being, to become a boudoir photographer.

The embodiment of the previous years of work undoing all of the hatred toward myself – culminated in the confidence I was able to pass on to the women in front of my camera.

That feeling has never gone away. Three years later, I’m empowering women full time. I have created a safe, inclusive space for all women. I don’t let anyone feel excluded and everyone walks out with their chin held high. I have the best job in the world and I am so thankful, every day, to be able to share in the journey of self-love, acceptance, and empowerment for the women who come to my studio.