Healing takes time. Healing is never finished. Healing leaves scars that no amount of silicone scar patches can remove but we need those scars to remind us of how far we’ve come from what wounded us, what contained us and what sent us into fetal position. Why am I rambling about scars today?
In 2015 I was at the height of my business. I was winning local awards and being published. Google newborn or child photographer for this area and I was in the top three. Finally I had arrived in my business but in my personal life I was failing. Ultimately I had to make the heart breaking decision to close my business, give up the lease on my studio and sell of much of my newborn and baby props to pay the debt I had accumulated from trying to keep a dying business alive. It was dying because I could no longer bring myself to leave my home to work. The thought of holding a newborn became scary to me. I was a newborn photographer and a damn good one. Not being able to hold a newborn was detrimental to my business. So in 2016 I began referring clients out and mourned the loss of my business.
As I open my business back up full time I have found myself falling back into the trap of discounting my own work and critiquing it based upon the success of others.I have found myself staying up late looking at other’s Instagram pages and feeling the beast that brought me to my knees roar. To know your beast and to know what wounded you is required to heal. You can’t heal without knowing what to heal.
Scars. They are here to remind me, you and every soul on this planet of our battle and our beasts that we slayed. As I write this after a morning yoga practice I find myself reminding myself to look at my scars. Remember them. “Look at your scars Amanda!!” Don’t forget the battle you won, the pain you felt when you or others inflicted the wounds that hide under those scars.
I know my limits and I know the challenge ahead of me as I renter a world that has changed so much. I can no longer just write a blog post and share in on FB. I now live in an Instagram world. Photographers now have carefully curated Insta pages with insightful meaning as if there is a secret book of Instagram posts for family sessions I don’t know about. Although I can pour my heart and soul on the screen for Dancing In A Hurricane I struggle to on an Instagram page. My fingers sit idle staring at it. I’m so much busier now and doing all it took and sacrificing what I did seems so overwhelming. Do I want to keep my peace and continue to have the opportunity to expand the newfound me or head back into a world that I let break me because I didn’t know my limits? When I look at my scars I know that answer.
Scars. Respect them. Accept them. Love them. Honor them. Take your own path and not that of others. You don’t know their journey and yours can never be like theirs. Your scars will help guide you.