Making Plans and Power Moves
When we went into lockdown, there were fantastic and unexpected benefits for me. I was able to clean out my closets. Whittle down my stack of papers that gets taller everyday. I got to enjoy my teenagers. My dog finally got the attention she deserves. It was really lovely to be still for a while. Boudoir Photography was not important. Talking about what we do and the impact that it has on the lives of the clients we see seemed extraneous. Getting excited about something I didn’t know when I was going to be able to do again was torture. I’ve shared and over shared about what we do and why we do it and somewhere in the middle of the world wide reset, talking about something that to the outside world seemed like fluff became less of a priority.
No one told me boudoir wasn’t important, no one said I should stop talking about the importance of what we do and no one suggested that the timing wasn’t right. It has been a year and I’ve still not felt quite right talking about boudoir photography.
That has to change. I let fear build to a greater importance than the most important thing in my life.
I am changing women’s relationships with their bodies through photography. I will take the best photo of you ever taken AND you’ll be naked.
That is what fear is. A disproportionate response to stress. Out of fear that I was losing my boudoir studio, I stopped putting myself out there. Out of fear that boudoir photography was going away, I think I let myself believe that talking about something other than a NEED was boastful and something to be ashamed of. My business is the one thing I am the MOST proud of in my life. A couple hundred women a year for 7 years (9 in business but those building years took time) is something to be immensely proud of. I have shown my children you DO NOT have to take the prescribed path in life to be happy and successful. My own relationship with my body has changed as a result of getting to know so many of you so intimately. Being afraid of losing the one thing I’ve never given up on, being afraid of losing the one that makes me the most proud, was just really a fear of losing myself. The fear of fear left me drained. I was exhausted from worrying and not being productive in the ways that would have made me feel more secure. One of those things being, making plans and power moves. So stay tuned. I have my feet under me and have started preparing to level up again.
