I Love Myself
I am 24 years old, I am the oldest out of 4!
I like to think of myself as the more quiet and reserved of my sisters, I have always been this way.
I started dating my fiancé when I was 15 years old and I am the mother of 2 angel boys.
My kids both passed away in 2013.
I have always been very protective of myself and others around me for everything I have gone through. I like to think that I always seem to put others before myself and that is what brings me happiness.
My reason for wanting to do a boudoir session was because I have been in a very dark place in my life for the past 5 years. I have forgotten how to love myself and forgotten who I am over all as a person.
Just in the past five years I have lost five of my family members; two of them being my kids.
I feel like I have been trying so hard to distract myself from the losses that I have not taken the time to actually heal or do things that make me feel human.
I felt like I needed to do something out of my comfort zone, something that was going to make me feel human again.
MY SESSION WAS ABOUT ME PEELING OFF LAYERS THAT I HAVE BUILT. LAYERS OF NEGATIVITY AND HURT.
I was so nervous before my session. That morning I woke up at 5 am and my shoot was not until noon that day. I paced around my house trying so hard to stop myself from caving in and canceling. I have never been good in front of a camera, so the fact that someone else who I did not know was going to see me and take pictures of me made me very nervous!
During my session I felt different. I felt at peace and happy with life. For those few hours, it was only about me and it was a special feeling.
I felt confident, free, beautiful, strong, and happy!
The moment that sticks out to me the most during my session is the moment that Molly asked me if I wanted to take off my last piece of clothing. When I took that last piece off, I felt like a totally different person, kind of like an out of body experience where I could see myself and how beautiful I felt.
I have never allowed myself to be so comfortable in my own skin. In that moment I felt so beautiful, its a feeling that I still hold inside of me to this day.
THAT MOMENT CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER.
I felt very emotional and beautiful. Going into my session I thought for sure that I would feel uncomfortable and awkward but I felt the total opposite of that; I felt confident! Right after my session, I got into my car and sat there for a while. I let out a big cry, but a happy one. It's a feeling that every woman should feel.
IT'S A FEELING THAT NO ONE CAN EVER TAKE AWAY FROM ME.
I felt so confident and all my worries were out the window.
"I love myself."
That is something that I struggled so hard to say or feel.
"I am beautiful, I am strong, I am everything I dreamed of being, I have always been everything I dreamed of being."
Some people will think that it's so silly for me to feel so strongly over a photo shoot but it's so much more than just that, it's a life changing experience to learn how to love yourself, to see how the world is looking at you.
I will carry this confidence with me forever now and have now learned to see that I am beautiful just the way that I am. Boudoir has taught me so much about self-love and how important it is to love yourself for who you are and who you are meant to be. That is something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Do it! It’s a life-changing experience. You will cherish that moment for a lifetime. If you decide to do this, the day you go to see your pictures and you think to yourself (or say it out loud like I did) “that’s me?” Just know that yes, that’s you!
That is the woman you were always meant to be.
