Women's Creek Stories - the morning something shifted
The following images are the evidence that I cracked open that Sunday morning in the water, that something deep shifted in my life, that I was - for the first time in a long, long time - exactly where I was supposed to be.
When Bry reached out her hand covered in ashes, I almost took it. I almost reached my own fingers out to squeeze hers. It was a reaction I had to stop myself from doing. Not because I felt I needed to comfort her, or hush her away from the pain that was coming up, but because I wanted my own grief-laden fingers to hold hers. I wanted to remember my own words I keep repeating to everyone else: we are not alone in our pain.
The truth is, I invited everyone to the creek Sunday morning because Central PA is a really hard place for me to return to. And because I am so, so tired of hurting. And because I needed good, thick feminine energy around my own hurting soul. What these women gave me that morning will forever far exceed what I gave to them. Standing there waist deep in the warm water, I knew this was the catalyst to something larger. I knew this was the first release of a dam that broke within me, of a path ahead of me suddenly clearer, of a divine devotion to what has stirred in my heart for so achingly long: I want to capture women in their rawest forms, in their own letting gos, in their own difficult, resilient beauty.
I wanted to grab her hand and squeeze her fingers and take that photograph, and next time I will.
Because there will be more. This was the beginning to something really, really powerful. This is what has transpired from two years of “un boudoirs.” This isn’t about boudoir, or nakedness, or sexualized imagery. Those things were only the start to where I want to go. Of course there is a place for those things, and I don’t denounce them. But when I unburied what I felt beneath them I found myself there in the water with the women releasing something. And now I’m hooked; I want to run, not walk. I want to meet you at the creek once a month to capture your own letting gos. I want to go to Gram’s afterwards and sit in wet clothes and laugh over lattes. I want to sit in complete holy stillness in an overgrown field under a full moon, let the camera’s slow shutter capture that dark, difficult space. I want to run in circles and dance and scream and burn things over big, hungry fires. I want community, and friendship, and to capture what magic reveals itself when we cut open that sacredness.
Because women’s rights have always been the center of who I am. Women empowering women, women holding one another accountable to be better humans, women standing up for what they deserve is what drives me. This, I know, is the heart of the niche I want my business to hone in on. Because I crave community, and friendship, and feeling less alone in my struggles and my pain and my own difficult transformations, and that must mean that there are others out there, too.
So, thank you to the women who crawled out of bed Sunday morning and into the creek, into my weird vision. Thank you for trusting me with your pain and your hearts and your faces strewn with tears. One of the emails I received afterwards sums up exactly what I want women to feel in my presence, and it is something I will tack to my wall, to the front of my mind, to remind myself why I need to continue to follow this pull and follow it mercilessly:
I can honestly say I wouldn’t be able to trust any other photographer to let me break down like that and truly release my grief. The authenticity of your story telling and ability to radiate the feelings inside your soul to those around you is a magical thing I’ve never experienced before.
I feel lighter, less conflicted. Free.
So here’s to women holding up other women. Here’s to the hot coals we cracked open there in the warm creek that Sunday morning. Here’s to moonlit sessions filled with grit and grain and star trails. Here’s to reaching out our own tired palms to hold the ashes of someone else’s grief. I am humbled and honored and forever grateful to be the one to hold space for your stories, and I look forward to all the magic yet to come.
