Category: healing

A few years ago, I had an empty room in my house. I longed to make it a creative oasis where I could take up space.

I wanted to sound out my sorrows on my grand piano and play with my new art supplies. I had just started dabbling in watercolor painting and loved the pleasure and power I felt when I was busy creating.

I wanted to take up space.

But my partner quickly shut me down when I shared my vision with him. “The piano is too big,” he said.

And just like that, I abdicated my power. I had already given up my right to park in the driveway in order to claim the upstairs office for my wedding photography business. This new dream seemed costly, and I didn’t want to pay the price.

I painted on small paper at the kitchen table with just a few supplies.

At night, I had a recurring dream of painting that empty room but bleeding out on the floor in childbirth before it was finished. I would wake up in a sweat, a thick, gloomy frustration lingering like a black cloud on the days following the dream.

No matter how much my partner tried to control the size of my desires, I hungered for expansion. I couldn’t ignore my ever-growing longing to take up space.

I wanted more space of my own to lose myself to creating, feeling, and imagining. This longing was alive and growing, like a child within my womb that would soon need to emerge.

“Soul Bones of the Wild Self,” Watercolor and Colored Pencil Sketch, 2017.

I finally said “yes” to myself and vowed to never again forfeit my right to take up space.

I left my partner and began my healing journey.

My healing was neither easy nor linear. Sometimes, I felt I was worse off than when I was in my relationship. On those days the expansive skies and unfenced pastures of my life felt overwhelming, and I longed for the cage I had known.

But I persisted. One step forward, two steps back, and still I expanded.

I moved to four zip codes in twelve months, taking up more physical space with each new residence. Though I always had at least one room to myself, I had no designated soulful space to create. So I painted on porches, in bars, on first dates in public places, and on the sides of mountains. 

Painting on the Blue Ridge Parkway, December 2017.

I moved again, this time with a roommate and her dog. I painted in the sunroom, building a barricade to keep the pets from stepping in wet paint (which they sometimes breached). I longed for a creative room of my own, with doors I could close. I hired a business coach and built a new website. I applied for artist residencies and got denied. I applied for artist grants and got denied again.

Toby’s tail was lethal when it came to my art supplies and wet paintings. But look at that cute face!

But I kept creating, dreaming, expanding. I continued to take up space.

I spilled my jar of ultramarine blue ink on the carpet and nailed holes into every wall to hang my work up. I filled up Every. Damn. Inch. of that 40 square-foot sunroom with my paintings and boudoir photography. By day I edited LGBTQ weddings on my iMac, and by night I flung paint onto blank canvases.

The largest painting I could fit in my studio was 3 feet by 4 feet. Plenty big, but I dreamed of going even bigger.

I kept applying for grants and putting out feelers for studio space. I didn’t stop allowing myself to take up space.

Last fall I got a text from my dear friend Lis about an art studio opening in Durham with Horse & Buggy Press and Friends. “This space is perfect for you,” she told me.

My jaw dropped. I had been searching for studio space for six months. I had just missed the deadline for a studio with Artspace, and I had decided to grin and bear it; I would apply again next March.

Lis told me the studio was near East Campus in the hip part of town, located a few blocks away from where I lived with my abusive partner. But it was 5 times larger than my sunroom, and had doors I could close. And it had a gallery in the front, where I could sell my art.

And it was within my budget.

I texted Dave, the owner, immediately. “It’s exactly what I’m looking for,” I told him.

Two weeks later, he gave me the key to my new studio.

I can’t contain my excitement as I take a selfie with my iPhone outside the storefront.

I moved in to my new studio this week, on the night of the full moon, three years after embarking on my healing journey after abuse.

As I hung up my fine art boudoir photographs on one wall, my Dreamscape Collection of abstract paintings on another, I erupted into silly, joyful fits of laughter.

I wasn’t weeping anymore. I wasn’t just surviving. I was thriving. And it felt fucking fantastic.

I hung my favorite paintings from my Dreamscape Collection above my computer, so that when I edited I could still get lost in my reveries when I looked up.

After unpacking the last box of art supplies, I lit incense, lay down on the cold concrete studio floor, and marveled at this enormous physical space that was fully mine, that represented the psychic and creative space I had birthed, nurtured, and tended to so persistently over these last three years.

I couldn’t help but think back three years to that empty room in my house. I hadn’t filled it up then because I didn’t know that I deserved to take up space. I had carried grief over this for three years, and I was finally ready to let it go.

I had completely, totally, finally demolished that empty room. And erected something sturdier that could fit the fullness of my dreams.

I had finally grown accustomed to taking up space instead of apologizing for the size of my desires.

What space do you need for yourself today, this week, this season, to feel comfortable?

Whether its a basement room where you nerd out over your rock collection or an off-site science lab where you conduct your academic research, you deserve all the space you need to tend to your version of creative, soulful living.

I invite you to not give up on your dreams. Your desires are not too big. You deserve safety and autonomy. You deserve a space of your own to do whatever lights you up.

You deserve to take up space.

And it doesn’t have to pay the bills to be legit. This physical studio does not make me an artist. I’m an artist because I compost my pain and create beauty from it. This studio is just the incubator for my dreams, my tears, my imaginings, my paintings, my varied embodiments of my pain, my Truth.

Want to take up space with me? Join me on Thursday, February 28 at my new studio for my first art reception of 2019! 

I’ll have my work up in the gallery for a 10-day pop-up show and am so stoked to share the goodness with you and show off my space. Entrance is free, and I’ll have snacks + wine for my guests. Come on by after work for happy hour and happy night of art!

The Details:

RSVP to my art reception here!

This month’s Woman Crush Wednesday is devoted to Tama and her pet rabbit, Lola.

They helped me heal in an unexpected way when I was sick and weak, wandering through a Southwest desert.

Here’s the story:

I had just left my ex and devoted the last four months to therapy, support group, and recovery. I was tired of thinking about abuse. I wanted to gorge on inspiration, love, and light.

So I packed my bags and booked a plane ticket out West. I planned on hiking in the saguaro desert by day and drinking in the starlit sky by night.

“This trip helped me heal!” I imagined my future self dreamily declaring.

What I imagined my trip would be: saguaro cacti and blue skies, a buffet of beauty and joy.

But I wasn’t prepared for my grief to follow me. I cried constantly at my friend’s house where I was staying; I couldn’t sleep.

Neither of us felt prepared for my fragility. So three days into my trip, she delivered the bitter blow: I needed to find another place to stay.

Ashamed, I booked an Airbnb and immediately moved into a fiber artist’s cottage. Tama’s bookshelves overflowed with volumes on tinctures, weaving, and hiking trails of the Southwest. Her pet rabbit, Lola, scampered around the red and teal house during the day, unfazed by my incessant crying.

I loved the minimalism of her Southwest style, which left me ample room for all my feelings.

Tama is a fiber artist, Nia instructor, and yogi who approached creativity from a holistic perspective. Her home studio overflowed with colorful felt patterns, yoga mats, and all sorts of wearable art. It was my first up-close-and-personal look into an artist’s life, and the healthy mind-body connection her space encouraged struck me. Even my guest room had yoga mats, and she invited me to put them to use as much as I wanted.

My body finally caught up with my grief, and I got sick. Tama brewed teas to reduce my fever and invited me to sit with her on her couch. I told her how I had come to the desert to find joy, and it wasn’t. fucking. working.

I took this self-portrait when I was at my weakest, before all the rabbit snuggles and tea.

Tama encouraged me to engage in gentle, mindful exercise as I healed. Despite having taken dance classes after college, I was a beginner when it came to yoga. When I shared this with Tama, she invited me to dance for her.

Normally, I feel super self-conscious dancing for anyone (Unless I’m in a bustling dance class where I can hide in the back, I prefer the solitude of an empty dance studio). But I had just learned a beautiful dance in my contemporary dance class back in Durham, and I felt the strong urge to share it with Tama. (My dance instructor, Shaleigh Comerford, set the choreo to the heartbreakingly beautiful song, “Song for Zula” by Phosphoresence.)

I credit Tama with making me feel comfortable enough to expose this side of myself. With her prompting, I cast my self-consciousness aside, turned the song on, and felt my creative soul come back to life.

My time with Tama was an initiation: from victimhood to survivorship, from feeling chained to my grief to learning how to gently coexist with it. Tama was an angel, mother, and muse all at once. She taught me how to hold space for my pain.

The more space I made for my pain, the more beauty entered and filled me up.

On my last day, Tama gave me her dog-eared copy of Women Who Run with The Wolves, a book I had snagged off her shelf and started reading in between coughing fits. It would later become my spiritual roadmap—the ticket out of my “stuckness” into soulful living. I’ve read it cover to cover twice now and sent copies to friends during their own life crises.

The day after I left I climbed a mountain with my friend Lorin (a woman crush for another post!) in Albuquerque. I felt confident and rejuvenated, ready to take on the next chapter of my life.

Tama’s warmth and graciousness towards me, a stranger in her house, helped me heal.

Who is a stranger you’ve encountered that forever altered your path? How did they hold space for your pain or fear?

Many of you have been asking me about the inspiration behind the vulnerable, deeply personal tone of my brand. “What books and podcasts influenced this direction?” is a question I’ve fielded a lot this month.

So I sat down and journaled about this. And ended up writing ten pages.

When I looked down at my list, what struck me most is this: all my influencers are women. Every. Single. One. 

From personal mentors to strangers at the grocery store. Even the fictional stories that have touched me the most starred girls and goddesses, saints and sorceresses, women and witches.

Me with my grandmother at age 6. She wrote short stories, painted and played a big role in encouraging my early artistic endeavors.

It’s not insignificant that all of my creative influencers are women.

My journey towards developing my worldview, chasing my calling as a creator, and shaping my personal brand has been decades long. It began when I was unruly and wild, six years old with messy hair and huge pink glasses that wouldn’t stay up on my teeny nose.

I spoke my longing the only way I knew how- through art. I would draw pictures of castles and orphan girls while stately white men white men in stiff suits delivered sermons that went way over my head.

Women weren’t given a voice in my community, so I created them from scratch to fill the void.

In my conservative childhood circle, women couldn’t preach or teach. Even the books we studied were written exclusively by men. Every now and then my pastors preached about influential women. But even then, those women served as supporting characters to the real male heroes of the stories.

I learned from an early age to hide my voice and submit to the louder, conventionally smarter men in my life. I felt mistrusting of my own feelings and starving for a worldview that encompassed my experience. I was searching for the Divine Feminine.

So how did I get from those stiff church pews to here: sprawled on my sun-soaked bed in my crop top and cuttoffs, effortlessly listing dozens of badass women who have nurtured my voice? And who are these women? What are their creations? What are their stories? How did they get there?

These questions feel so important to me that I’ve decided to devote every Wednesday to a woman influencer in my life.

Every last Wednesday on my Instagram and blog, I’ll share a post about the women in my life who have most deeply influenced my path as a creative. I plan on doing this until I run out of names….which means I’ll be doing this indefinitely. Because there are that many queens who have changed me.

Wanna learn more?

Follow me on Instagram, or sign up for mailing list to receive my weekly newsletter which will feature this new series.

How do you feel about this idea? Who are your women role models? Who do you hope to see featured in my new series? Sound off in the comments below!

This week, I’m getting personal with you. I want to share a story about how three boudoir sessions over the course of a week helped heal a very wounded part of myself just a little more. I found healing through boudoir photography; the camera shed light on those parts that needed healing, and helped transform them.

Here’s the story of how I found healing through boudoir photography.

I asked my friend (and Spring Boudoir Extravaganza collaborator!) Lis Tyroler to photograph me this year. This 30 second video sums up our friendship pretty well:

We were attending a photography conference together in Nashville and wanted to experiment with everything we were learning about boudoir photography. I had only done one other boudoir session for the camera and found it an empowering experience, and I was eager to undress for the camera again.

The first time Lis photographed me, it was a train-wreck. Here’s a photo from it:

It’s not a bad photo, but I feel so self-conscious in it and disconnected from my body that it makes me not like the resulting image as much.

We both felt rushed since we were trying to squeeze in 20 minutes of boudoir photos before heading to an evening class. I wasn’t clear with myself or with Lis on what I wanted to achieve/explore in my session, and we hadn’t taken time to establish rapport. I wasn’t even wearing my own lingerie- I didn’t feel like myself. And an innocuous comment about my nervous laughter while posing on the bed sent me into a shame spiral.

I shut down. I felt the furthest away from experiencing healing through boudoir photography.

Lis put the camera down, and we halted our session.We both felt frustrated with ourselves, we both felt like failures.

I got dressed, and as we walked together to our next class (aptly named “The Psychology of Boudoir,” which focused on how women find healing through photography), we talked about what had just happened. We were both emotional and honest with one another. It was an important turning point.

Selfie from dinner- it was fun to take our minds off things.

After class, we ate good food, drank some wine, and decided to start over.

Round 2 that evening was so much better. I felt looser with the wine and knew more of what I wanted to explore in my session: I wanted to feel playful, joyful, sexy. I wanted to wear my own lingerie. So I put on Miley Cyrus, did somersaults on the hotel bed in my lingerie, and unleashed my inner goofball.

I had fun. I communicated a lot more with Lis, and I didn’t shut down. Round 2 was a success, and it could have stopped there and been a great experience.

But I was about to embark on a journey that would provide even deeper healing through boudoir photography.

On our road trip home, we got stranded in Asheville during a snowstorm. After being on the road for six days, I felt ungrounded and anxious to get home. I missed my boyfriend and my cat. I missed sleeping in my own bed. And I missed my space.

So I took a bath- which is where I feel most centered- and asked Lis to photograph me.

I put on my favorite bath-time relaxation playlist (Gregory Alan Isakov + Iron and Wine), and focused on the water.

This boudoir experience was completely different than the previous two. It didn’t feel like boudoir, because I wasn’t performing for the camera- I wasn’t trying to channel anything other than a feeling of being at-one with my body, spirit, emotions.

I’ve always loved the water- I feel connected to my California roots when I’m in water. I take baths when I’m feeling depressed, feeling overworked, needing space to download all of my emotions, or needing soothing from period cramps and stressed-out muscles. The water is where I go for healing, and for prayer.

The photos of me in the bath are SO different than the photos from our first two sessions. I look so comfortable, sensual, relaxed.

Though conscious of Lis’s camera at first, I surprisingly got used to her presence and even welcomed it! It was nice to share my bath-time routine with someone else, and together we got into a flow.

Lis showed me the back of her camera while I was still in the bathtub, and I started crying halfway through.

When I saw this photo of myself- looking into the camera but so at peace with myself, I lost it. I had finally found healing through boudoir photography.

I felt like I was seeing myself through loving eyes- as Lis sees me, as the Divine Mother sees me. It was so different than how I usually see myself: too fat, too thin, too muscular, not muscular enough, too this, too that. Never enough. I see myself through such judgmental eyes so much of the time…and this was such a contrast.

She saw I was crying, and she put the camera down. We talked about it. I felt myself let go of pain I had been holding onto for years about my body, my sexuality, my worth. I told her how good it felt to be seen for me- to be photographed where I felt most at ease with myself- and to not be performative for the camera, a lover, a partner. To just be me.

Here’s what this was:

“To try to heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness, it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. The fatal sickness is despair, a wound that cannot be healed because it is encapsulated in loneliness, surrounded by speechlessness. We must go to the wilderness of creation to be reborn.”  -Wendell Berry

There’s a lot to unpack in this favorite quote of mine: the transformative power of being seen by others, the communal nature of healing, the creative life force that we tap into when we are creating something together.

There’s something so powerful in being seen. It has the opportunity to bring you healing. It helps you own your story: all of it- the victories you jubilantly share with the world, the regret you reserve for your private journals, your shame, your bliss.

My eating-disordered ego wants me to hide my shame and purge my “excessive” emotions. But when I saw my portrait on the back of Lis’s camera, I saw ALL of me- the good and the bad. I felt myself get put back together that much more. I felt whole. It was clear as day: I saw me, and I loved me.

As it relates to my story about these 3 different boudoir experiences: what started out as a fun experiment (undressing for the camera in our hotel room to fight off boredom!) turned into something much more powerful. These first two stories would have been great in and of themselves- I learned a bit more about myself and what makes me feel comfortable in both. But this third bathtub session hit on something much deeper. Lis and I had established a deep rapport by the end of our trip: we had both seen each other cry, we had seen each other early in the morning with crazy bedhair. That made all the difference. I felt safe enough with her to let my guard down and let the camera in.

After going through these 3 sessions, especially the first, I know how important it is to help my clients feel their best, to not be rushed, and to ensure they feel safe in my presence. I’ve learned this firsthand from being on the other side of the camera, and I understand how important it is to come away from boudoir not only having great photos, but feeling great about your experience. I want the session to feel successful, safe, and FUN for you. Your pre-session Discovery Worksheet and consult will provide a solid foundation for us to build on in your session. I’ll listen to your hopes and hesitations, and together we’ll make magic.

Lis in the morning hotel light, video chatting her kids.

It’s not that different from how I feel with Carol, my therapist of seven years. I know that when I enter Carol’s plant-filled office, I can breathe, cry, scream, let out whatever I need to explore in that one-hour session, in the safety of her presence, confined by the walls. With Lis, I felt something very a similar. I was able to let go, be vulnerable, and find healing.

Boudoir photography has the power to transform. To give your ideas wings, your lips words, to help you see just how awesome you are, how much power for good is at your disposal. Art is balm for your wounds, fuel for your fire.

If you can’t see yourself, how can you love yourself? Your whole self? The good, the bad, the beautiful?

Come experience healing through boudoir photography!

I’m hosting a Spring into Boudoir Extravaganza with my soul sista Lis Romine Tyroler, and we have limited spaces available.

Whether you’ve always wanted to try boudoir—or feel super nervous about it—this is the perfect opportunity to dip your toe in the waters.

When & Where

Saturday & Sunday, April 28-29 at Restoring Balance in Straw Valley in Durham

Your Boudoir Session Includes

  • 1 Discovery Session, where you’ll fill out an online worksheet to identify what you want to explore during your session and any hesitations you may have. We’ll connect by phone or in person to review your answers, at least 48 hours before your session.
  • 1 hour Hair & Makeup pampering before the shoot with our fab stylists
  • 1 hour photoshoot in the outfit of your choosing
  • Photo + Product Selection Session, where you’ll reflect on your experience and pick out your favorite photos for your fine art prints and albums.

How Much?

$325 for the session fee and you must order $175 minimum in products (gorgeous prints, books, etc.). We’ll have beautiful samples for you to look at before your shoot!

Think this could be for you? Have more questions? Schedule your phone consultation now + receive a product guide!