Learning to love yourself

Last January I had my first boudoir sessions and it was an incredible experience for me. As I wrote in last years blog about them, they were extremely liberating not only for my clients but myself as well. That being said, I didn’t really push those types of sessions over this last year. I was plenty busy with family portraits, senior sessions and sports that I didn’t try to expand my boudoir business. I almost didn’t even put together sessions for Valentine’s Day this year. But I did. And they once again had a huge impact on me.

An idea and a purpose, you might say, started to bud in the back of my head last year. After this last month’s session, it has taken root and I am excited to see exactly where it goes!             

In order to better understand why this has had such an impact on me, I feel like I need to start with my story. I was 15;  I was a gymnast, and I was anorexic. I can’t tell you when it started, or a specific trigger but I can remember going the entire day at school eating nothing but a piece of chewing gum. After school I’d go for a run and then go to gymnastics practice. One day I blacked out in the middle of a back tuck, luckily I wasn't hurt but I knew it was because of what I was doing to my body. I had a weekly ritual trip the local bagel store for a “treat”; a blueberry bagel which I would purchase. For the next hour, I would methodically tear it apart piece by piece and eat it. Then I’d go run. Once again I don’t remember the exact moment or reason but at some point I also started binging and purging. I would weigh myself, binge, weigh myself again, purge and then weigh again to make sure I was at the pre binge weight or under. Each single day began with me weighing myself.  The number on that scale dictated my mood and actions for the day.

For years, my eating disorder controlled my life. Every aspect of my life was determined by whether or not I felt fat.  I could never enjoy myself at any kind of social event because I was too busy judging all the other women in the room and beating myself up for not being skinny enough, pretty enough, or just plain good enough. I was constantly in a battle with my own thoughts about what I had eaten or what I hadn’t eaten, and if I had worked out enough.

I beat myself up constantly for not being what I thought I was supposed to be.

This crippling self doubt and resentment towards my own body kept me from doing so many things I wanted to do.

Today, I am 36 years old, with three daughters of my own. I have been dealing with my eating disorder for 21 years and I will continue to deal with it until the day I die. I am leaps and bounds from where I was even just a year ago, I am finally learning not to be scared of food, I'm more confident than I have ever been. However, this disease is similar to an alcoholic; every single day I make a conscious decision to be healthy. Every.single.day. I struggle.  But I do not want my daughters to go through this and on really bad days, thinking about what they are learning from me, makes me sit down and eat dinner with them.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with boudoir photo sessions? A lot. Everytime I advertise my boudoir sessions, I get the following from several people “I’d love to do a session, but not right now, I need to get in better shape.”

How I respond to those comments is this:

I understand, we all feel that way. We all have parts of our body that we wish were different, we all have things we would like to change. The point of a boudoir session is to accentuate the parts of our body we love, to let go a bit and let us see how someone else sees us. To learn to love the bodies we have right now, and to stop criticizing ourselves. These sessions are not about being in sexy lingerie but about being in something that makes you feel sexy. A tank top and underwear, a flannel shirt with a pretty bra poking through, an oversized shirt showing shoulders; whatever makes you feel good. Most are surprised when by the end of a session they are showing a lot more than they thought they would! My job as the photographer is to know what poses fit the best body types, how to work the light and how to make you feel comfortable and look beautiful!

This year, I decided I needed to be more than talk. I needed to know both sides of the boudoir session. I am 100% guilty of saying “oh when I lose 10 pounds, I’ll do one”. When my friend and fellow photographer Sam Tribble said she wanted hers done, I said “only if you do mine too” So I found myself not only getting ready for a weekend of shoots in January but also getting ready for my own….not an easy thing to do.

I have had three children, I gained A LOT of weight with my first pregnancy, and because of this I have stretch marks, and after 2 more pregnancies I have extra skin around my stomach. I hate it, I hate that I work out so much but still have this skin. I have found myself beating myself up mentally for it. Why? Because I’m not some celebrity who looks perfect 5 weeks after having a baby? Well I'm never going to be where I was before I had children and it's high time I start to accept that! I decided to take to heart what I tell my clients so the week before my shoot I started focusing on what I like about my body. I love my shoulders and my arms. They are strong. I love my legs from running. I communicated all of this with Sam, just as I talk to my clients about these things leading up to the shoot. We talked about poses, outfits and ideas.

I’m not all that comfortable in front of the camera with clothes on, but I have to say that by the end of my shoot, I felt more comfortable half naked in front of the camera than I ever have (with clothes on)! Sam showed  me a screenshot and I felt the tears flood to my eyes (I couldn’t believe how I looked and was so happy that I had finally done this shoot. When I viewed the edited images, I didn’t see the things I hated about myself, I saw the things I loved. I saw myself through different eyes.

Again, the boudoir sessions have sparked something in me.  We, especially women, have so many pressures we are faced with on a daily basis.  With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest we are given these false ideas that we have to be perfect and over the top to be a successful wife, mother and woman. That’s not the case and it shouldn’t be the case.

I have this incredible feeling that I can use my photography in a way in which to help women. To help them feel beautiful, sexy and confident. We need to learn to love our bodies at every stage of our lives: when we are young, when we are at our fittest, when we are at our heaviest, when we are carrying a baby, after we have given birth, as we grow older. We must learn to love ourselves and I want to help us do that by photographing women - real women!

I am working on the beginning stages of an idea for a personal project which includes photographing women in a way in which we are embracing and celebrating both the good and the bad. I want to change our perception of beauty and perfection. I want my girls to look up to real women, not photoshopped magazine women! If you are interested in being a part of this project, please contact me!

I know this has been a long post, I hope you stuck around to read it all :)! Last but not least, I wanted to share a few of my images that Sam took. This is really out of my comfort zone, but I’m asking others to be real, so I need to put myself out there as real as well!

I haven't shared all my favorites (gotta keep some for the hubby :))