A woman of luck

Thinking back to when I was a child and my relationship with myself and my body I remember being taught to care about how I look, but not too much. Be smart, but not too much. Care about myself, but not too much. Everything was important, but not too much, because if I crossed that line then I would be futile, vulgar or just 'to smart to be likeable'.

My childhood friends, who are still very close friends to this date, used to share this same damaged self-esteem that kept hurting itself more and more with time since before we even knew what self-esteem was. Even before I could come to my own mind about what beauty was, I already knew I didn't have it. Cute, but not enough. Smart, but not enough.

Together we created this self-deprecating bubble from which we could never escape and where we would never be too much of anything. And this went on for years.

With time this became my uncomfortable safety zone, which made me give too much importance to the role of ‘luck’ in my life.

Surely I have a lot of luck and it began on the exact moment, family and social context in which I was born. But there's a lot of things that I unfairly pinned to luck because I couldn't pin them to my competence.

And that's how I became a woman of luck. Without even noticing I was building this luck with my own hands every single day and, for not noticing, the self-esteem remained stagnant where it was despite all that I was building for myself.

But despite all that I have managed to build comfort in being alone since I was young.

I remember that the first time was when I was 15 and went to the movies by myself without even realizing this wasn't a very common thing to do.

And since I left home at 21 to live in Australia I realized that 'home’ was being with myself. That was when I learnt to keep this home in order, nestle in it and get back to it every time I felt far from myself. And that was also when I learnt how refreshing it is to know with intimacy the joys and the sorrows of being who I am.

But it was only about 7 years ago that I stopped being so lucky and started to recognize my own work, my competence and, dare I say, even a little beauty in myself.

With therapy I learnt to acknowledge the power of self-responsibility - both on the pain and on the joy that we cause. I learnt that everything I have today I built it myself, and a lot more can come out of it if I want to.

And with Brene Brown (yup, the queen) I learnt to let shame open up space to courage, and pay less attention to the criticism depending where they're coming from.

Today I'm still haunted by low self-esteem at times. I'm the photographer who doesn't like herself in any pictures and that feels extremely inappropriate in most situations (even when I play it cool), but all this internal work that I've been doing over the past many years help me climb off this whole each time I fall.

My story with self-esteem is the main reason why I found myself again in the space of photographing other women.

I've documented many women in the past year. Each of them with their own stories, achievements, losses, and moment in life. And if there's one thing that I was able to see in (almost) all of them was a hurt self-esteem. An urgency to look at themselves, facing embarrassment - or even shame. A need to set themselves free from this self-deprecating feeling that can make us hostage if we don't take control over it, and when it does, it doesn't let us leave or expand in any direction. And oh boy, do I get this feeling.

Being able to connect with this and offer a safe space to feel this embarrassment, or shame, to overcome it, to look at yourself, surrender yourself, free yourself and cry if the tears come, is the whole reason why I do what I do. Every. Single. Day.

And I'm not just rewarded with the photos - that make me emotional each time I send out the preview and the whole gallery. But knowing that it was a lot more than taking pictures for an hour and a half. It was an experienced of an expression of self-love that I was able to offer and that will be remembered for years.

Over the last weeks I shot some of these sessions and I always save all the comments and responses I have in a place where I can get back to every time I need to remind myself of my 'why'. Soon I will come back here and share the story of these sessions… But for now I just wanted to say to all of you who already had your pictures taken by me: I thank you wholeheartedly for your trust - not only on my work, but on trusting me to share all the little joyful and painful pieces of being who you are. It means the world.