Boudoir isn't just for Brides
If you have heard my story before, you know that yes, indeed I was a bride-to-be when I first experienced a boudoir shoot. Ever since I did my photoshoot, I truly have been yelling from the rooftops that every single woman should experience this regardless of the season of life, age, motherhood, singleness, etc.
For most of my life I have been fairly comfortable with my body. I have never had a lot of extreme insecurities about the way I look; yes I go through phases of not feeling awesome, but I don’t ever recall truly condemning my body for the way it looked. My experience during my shoot changed the way that I felt about my body, not necessarily just the way I viewed my body. I waited roughy eight weeks until I got my digital files back. Samantha, owner of Orange Photographie, photographed me with a film camera so I didn’t get to see any “sneak peeks” right after my shoot to affirm that I “looked good.” To be honest, I didn’t even care.
I did not even care about the sneak peeks or how I thought maybe I wanted to look because all I could tangibly feel were my feelings after the shoot. How my body felt. How my heart felt. The energy inside me was uncontainable. I remember immediately calling two of my close girlfriends and telling them how incredible I felt. It was like a weight was lifted off my body, I felt confident, I felt rejuvenated, I felt like this huge gust of positive breathe and wind was just swirling around in my body. It felt good to feel awesome barely wearing anything. It felt good to feel comfortable. It felt good to not second guess myself. It felt good to just be. To be me. Without anyone else’s perception and opinion included.
So thats when it started. Literally moments after my first shoot, I wanted every woman I knew to experience what I had just done. Why did I do the shoot? As a gift for my husband-to-be yes, but then I realized very quickly that this was first a gift for me.
What if women invested in themselves like this every year? Every other year? Maybe before or after some big life event? What would it look like if we did this and then we could show our future daughters, and future sons for that matter. That women who love themselves and who are continually working on believing how awesome they are is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.
If you are reading this and you are in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 7'0’s, etc. I invite you to consider this.
If you are single, in a relationship, engaged, married, divorced, widowed, I invite you to consider this.
If you are a mother of one, two, three, four and more or have no kids at all, I invite you to consider this.
Whoever you are and wherever you are in your life, I invite you to consider this.