Once upon a time, I was a full-time wedding, portrait, and family photographer.

Before that, I was a kid, then a teen, with a camera.

Photography was my first real love. Through a camera, I was always noticing and attuning to beauty, to presence, to nature, to human connection. Access to appreciating it, documenting it, sharing it and connecting with others about it came with the click of the shutter, over and over again.

I didn’t know back then that I was living with CPTSD.

Now, as a somatic coach and with 8 years of reckoning with + (ongoing) healing from CPTSD (including a wholeeee lot of losing everything, rebuilding, and repeating that cycle a few times over), I can see how much photography gave me. What a lifeline it was for me.

And why I ultimately burned out so badly as a photographer back in 2017, starting my journey with learning about and beginning to heal from developmental, complex, and chronic trauma.

That’s a story for another time.

For now, I’ll share that I’ve been slowly dipping my toes back into photography over the past year or two - slowly, carefully, in fits and starts. My body gave me no choice but to be careful and slow with how I’ve rebuilt my relationship with it, finding what’s right-sized, letting it all develop in its own time. I really struggled with it as it was happening. Now, I’m grateful that it took the exact path that it did.

Since training as an integrative change work coach in 2023 (a modality through which I practice somatic and embodiment work), the dream of offering a particular type of embodied portraiture sessions has consistently been tapping on my window.

It’s taken a long time for me to be ready to explore it. In July, the time had come.

I asked my friend Maddie Lam, an incredible musician, body worker, and birth doula who’s focused on helping people release trauma from their bodies, if she would help me explore this offering as I experimented with how I wanted to shape it.

Together, we went to the arnold arboretum in jamaica plain to play with this concept and see what might emerge…

I asked Maddie to come with a word or feeling or two that she wanted to embody for this session. Her words were

Activation + Self-Trust.

I did some facilitation to support her in dropping into the energy of activation and self-trust, and we let things flow from there - Maddie embodying the energy of activation and self-trust, and me and my camera, witnessing and documenting it all.

The part I’m most excited about comes after - a gallery photographs that can be printed, decorated, and hung around her home as talismans.

Reminders of her intentions, neural-pathway-strengthening portals into embodying that energy more often in her daily life. I’m forever geeking out about the magic we can make together, the way we can create and relate in ways that support us toward liberation, toward loving and expressing ourselves and one another with more of us.

See the gallery below -

Want to make some magic together? Sign up here to hear when Embodied Portraiture Talisman sessions are open.