When you dream of something you need to go out and get it because it certainly won’t come to you. It takes hard work to get what you want so put the effort in and just do it!  That is the attitude I start with when I’m working on a new project that excites and scares me a little bit.  I have fallen in love with romance and connection and finding beauty in others.  My why for doing what I do and being who I am comes straight from the emotional connection with my mother.  It is true that I wasn’t best friends with my mom and we didn’t see eye to eye on everything but we had love and trust and true respect and admiration for one another.  I was taking a class the other day to help me get clear on what I wanted to do this year with my photography business and life.  While trying to discover the “WHY” I do what I do, it hit me.  It hit me like a ton of bricks, I felt it that hard.  I actually had a little cry sessh from the weight of it.  And then I wrote a thank you to my instructor because she should know that she made a difference.  We ALL want to know we make a difference so I followed my mother’s character and wrote my thank you first.

My why may not be profound or come off as a great overture.  But it is MY why and MY purpose for me, now.  My mother made me feel 3 important things in addition to love.  These feelings were taken for granted for many years because I assumed it was an everlasting pool or a renewable resource that would be with me for a life time.  Well, that was taken away and the emotional support went with it.  It is difficult to explain.  Honestly, I didn’t start this post to say what I have said so far but it’s coming out of my fingers thru the keyboard and onto this page so I guess it needs to be released.  Anyway, I will just say, when you lose an important person in your life, they truly do take a piece of you with them.  It leaves you feeling a bit lost and not whole.  You will learn new things about yourself as you try to fill that empty space.  You will discover YOU.  So what did I find out about me that no personality test or astrological sign could disclose?  I discovered I am very much like my mother.

The assignment was to find your WHY so you could move onto your WHAT and then your HOW.  The prompt for me was “I take pictures because I believe ________________ .”  While staring at the page I had a brief moment of clarity and wrote “every woman/girl should feel special, beautiful, important”.  I read it over and over and then it clicked.  This is how my mother made me feel every day.  She took special care in letting me know I was beautiful and smart and needed, making me feel special and important and rare.  I lived life believing this until she was gone and then these feelings were muted, dulled and absent.  I did feel lost and untethered.  It is scary to be in that place of uncertainty and to oddly sense a new possibility but not understand what it is.  Luckily for me I was surrounded by the best support system consisting of family and friends who saw or rather see what my mother saw in me.  I just needed to believe it and see it in myself.  I’m coming around.  I’m finding me and it feels amazing.

Now we are back to my WHY.  Giving a woman the experience of feeling beautiful and special and important during their photo session and in our conversations is why I take pictures.  It feels good to me to make someone else feel great about themselves.  To give them a boost of confidence.  To show them their beauty when they may not see it themselves. To let them know they are important.  This isn’t just part of my job, it is part of who I am and reaches every aspect of my life.  My family, my friends and people I meet.  They are all receptive to what I can give to them even if it’s just a sweet hello and a simple smile. This is true for all my clients since there are men who are on the other side of my lens and families and babies just as often as there are high school senior girls and boudoir clients.  Men need just as much of a boost as women they just don’t let on about it.  🙂

Anyway, this was going to be a post showing off some recent fun portrait work I shot but I will have to put those in the next post.  Today I will share a couple of MY confidence boosting pictures taken by the lovely Nikki Closser.  She took the time to make me feel special, beautiful and important.

xox

Cheers~Ivy

 

 

If you are interested in the class I’m taking you can read about it here: New Year New You by Leah Remillet.

Alrighty folks, stay tuned for beautiful images coming your way.  So much to share after our long holiday and restart to the new year!!!

 

by Ivy Towler