HOW BOUDOIR CHANGED MY LIFE

I know it sounds dramatic, and maybe a little cliché, to say that boudoir changed my life. But it did, and I want to tell you how.

My whole life, I was a bigger girl. For as far back as I can remember, I was comparing myself to other girls, wondering why I was so much bigger, noticing all the little ways our bodies differed and how everyone else was somehow better than me. By the time I was a teenager, I literally hated my body. I couldn’t pass by a mirror without picking myself apart. Having stretch marks in high school is tough.

Flash forward a few years into adulthood, and I had developed a type of fake confidence. Having lived in the body-positive social media era for a while, I felt like it was more acceptable to appear like I loved myself and felt confident. But inwardly, I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how. It was an odd place to be, I’ll admit. I wore all the cute outfits and bikinis that I wanted. I took pictures on the beach and by the pool. People passing by would compliment me, and my friends and family would hype me up for being so confident. And it really seemed like I was. But no one saw the version of me crying in the dressing room because my body dysmorphia took away any real perception of what I actually looked like, or the version of me unable to make eye contact with myself in the mirror before a shower. I hid it well, but I was struggling. I felt like a fake, and I genuinely hated myself.

Then came boudoir. I had heard about this type of photography and was curious. I thought maybe if I couldn’t love myself, then I could feel better through helping other women love themselves.

I quickly came to realize a few things:

• Most women do not like their bodies, even if they seem perfect in someone else’s eyes.
• We all share similar struggles with body image.
• Everyone who stepped in front of my camera was so much more beautiful than they thought.

I would hear the same few things leading up to every session:

“I don’t have the body for this.”

“I don’t like how I look naked, so I don’t expect to like more than a couple photos.”

“I don’t look like the women you post.”

“I have stretch marks, cellulite, and rolls when I sit.”

As I talked with more and more women, I realized we all feel the same way about our bodies. I would have a client who I thought had the absolute perfect dream body, and she carried the same concerns about herself as I did while wearing pants 12 sizes larger than her.

Then it hit me. Maybe it’s not our bodies that are the problem. What if it’s simply the incredibly unrealistic expectations that have been projected onto us as women for the entirety of our lives? This realization is where the hard work began. Learning to unpack and relearn a lifetime of unrealistic standards and body image struggles is not easy. But the thing that helped me the most was my work. Getting to know so many women through their sessions and realizing that genuinely every single woman I met, no matter her size, was absolutely ethereal and beautiful, despite not even seeing that herself. This felt profound. I had been hating myself for so long, just like many of my clients, and there was so much beauty and softness right there that I had been missing.



I found that the more I worked on healing, learning to love myself, and meeting myself where I was at, the better I was able to help other women do the same.

That’s when I realized this is my passion and my calling: helping women overcome a struggle that nearly all of us share while learning to embrace our femininity and natural selves. I couldn’t be more thankful to have found this line of work.

I have now worked with hundreds of women of all shapes, sizes, and walks of life, and my initial observations remain true. But now I’ve also seen that it’s possible to rewrite our stories. We don’t have to live with shame and hatred toward our bodies. You can love yourself where you are at, and in fact, you deserve to. Learning to genuinely love myself and appreciate my body not just for how it looks, but more importantly for all it does for me, was life-changing. And I wouldn’t have been able to do it if it weren’t for boudoir.



If you’re ready to experience that same transformation, I am here to help. I will meet you wherever you are on your journey and help you learn to do the same: seeing yourself with softer, kinder eyes and understanding that you are always deserving and worthy of love.