The Sadness

Getting to know you ladies and hearing your stories is something that always captures my heart.
Knowing your thoughts and feelings about your session and what led you here is something I feel like differs for everyone!

I want to know your story.
Your feelings, your heart.
I want to feel your experience.

That is why....every session will get a chance on the blog. 
Every brave woman that wants to tell her story..

The first one I asked was my dear friend Cindy. 
She wanted to do a........
​Well- Ill let her tell it...... 

The Sadness.......By Cindy Marshall


As the months led up to turning 40 I was terrified the moment would come that every over 40 year old woman dreads...
I've heard so much about how awful it is to turn 40. That life just seems to go downhill after that. But I had not really felt or seen it in that light, and I was just dreading the moment it came as it grew closer and closer to the day.

I had a different feeling coming over me...you see my personality tends to be funny, witty, laughable, and I don't tend to take a whole lot of things too seriously. So, I began planning a "fun" 40th birthday shoot with my dear friend Jana. Photographer to photographer I knew she would get my vision...a fun tutu, a glittery 40 on top of a cake. A shirt mocking the one year old shoots and some champagne popping! Screw this turning 40 sucks, I'm going to laugh at the world who says 40 isn't fun! 

As we talked and planned it, Jana suggested doing a boudoir shoot as well. You see, my dear friend also happens to be one of the top boudoir photographers you can ever ask to know. In fact, I push people her way when I get asked to take that style....she's THAT good! 
Ok, ok Jana I'm thinking in my head...I'll appease you and take these pics, but they just aren't my style. I'm not going to actually like them. 

You see, I could sit here all day and tell you I laugh at turning 40, because it's true. I really do! I'm ok with it in every aspect....but maybe one. I do feel sexy in my own way. I'm not tone but I'm on the slim side. I have great legs (yes, I said it! It's not cocky to admit a part of you is great, it's confidence). But sexy to me wasn't my body. It was  who I was. I am the guys girl and I loved being her. I am obsessed with sports, I work in sports, I don't just pretend to like them...I actually truly love them! Especially football and soccer. You can't pull me away when it's on and usually I'm at some kind of live sporting event. To me that was sexy! But Jana is talking about a whole different kind of sexy.....like you want me, in barely any clothes, posing without cracking up hysterically at myself and look sexy? Not going to happen Jana, but good luck trying!!

Fast forward the next few months and we do my fun shoot. I have a blast, shake my tu tu around, I'm laughing, and drinking mimosas...what else could be better?
Then my girl wants to do her thing. And we do. I'm not going to describe the shoot. You get the drift. More than likely you have seen your pics and you know her style. Still didn't leave there feeling any other way than I made my friend happy by taking some of her style and I got my super awesome cake smash style photos that I can't wait to see. 

Then the thing I feared most happened....
She sent me the photos.

And the thing I feared most happened...
The sadness hit.

Why? 

Why now? 

Why that I'm opening these pics did I now feel the sadness? 
​
Here it is, let me explain it to you.

Truth was, I did feel sexy for being that super cool guys girl. Always have, always will. But three years before this, I had my heart broken. No not broken, that doesn't do it justice. I had someone hold my heart in his hand....all of my heart. Every part of me that made up who all the good parts were was in that heart, and he took it and held it and after he was done loving it he took and ice pick to it and shattered it into a million little pieces that would take three years to put back together. My truth, I had not felt the kind of sexy a woman should feel for the last 5 years. I saw cute and funny but never hot, and beautiful. I saw beaten and scarred but smiling through it, not confident and controlling and smiling for pure bliss. 

And at that moment, I looked at each photo tears streaming down my eyes, and my sadness came at me all at once. I was sad because I let a man take away a woman who was always there and hide her in a shell for a very long time. And I realized no man was ever worth enough to do that to you!

My sadness and tears would only last a few minutes;
I think I just needed that moment. It was my healing moment. It was my F you moment to him. 

And then the smile came....
the really really big and full on ear to ear smile and I swiped through each picture and thought "I'm hot!" Like no really, I look pretty damn good in these!!!
ow the hell did Jana do this? Being a photographer, yes I know it takes an amazing camera, all the right set up, and some incredible software to make it all come together....But, what you can't do, is pull fake out of a photo. 

She captured me in the essence of me. My absolute favorite ones were the ones I was laughing
. It was true,
it was genuine,
it was me.....and she showed my legs....my legs that I loved so much.
I just felt sexy! And it felt so incredible to feel sexy again! 
After I put the pics away, I realized that women need to do shoots like this for so many different reasons. Mine happened to be to heal from something stripped away long ago that I needed to be shown I still carried inside of me. 
I can't thank you enough for helping me find that woman inside of me again my lovely Jana. You are my soul sister in love or the camera and I can't thank you enough. That inner goddess loves you for letting her surface back to my light....


And to the man who held my heart and an ice pick...
I reinvented myself in your absence.