Five years ago my dear friend and mentor Sara Lando challenged me to turn my camera on myself, but I wasn’t ready. In the time that has passed since I was her student, I have been faced with more than a few dark nights of the soul. I have been forced to look critically at what I’ve experienced and endured in my life, and learn to accept all of it— the good with the bad— because the whole messy lot of it is what makes me, me. As such, I am warily venturing out into a new series of self-portraits…
Read MoreThe Negative Side of Social Media : Commissioned by Unsplash
As some of my longtime followers know, I’ve had a complicated relationship with social media. In 2019 I was experiencing so much anxiety that I permanently deleted all of my accounts (60,000 followers over 3 platforms) with no plans to return. I spent the next year off the grid. Though I’d already been in therapy for years I also began going to a support group for adult survivors of childhood abuse (ASCA). I started climbing and began regularly cycling again. The combination of processing trauma, moving my body, and removing myself from situations and relationships that exacerbated my anxieties, I began to heal…
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Living an Un-curated Life
Today marks the one-year mark of me leaving social media. To say that this past year has been transformative for me would be putting it mildly. I’ve grown more mentally, emotionally, physically, and creatively in the past year than any other time of my life. I’ve come to learn that there was a significant amount of trauma in my past that needed to be addressed and worked through and through the process learned to separate my sense of worth from what I can create or do for others. I’ve learned to appreciate those who have loved me and supported me unconditionally through the years. I began the process of tearing down walls within myself, letting past pains and fears intermingle with current hopes and aspirations. This process, which I refer to as the un-curation of my life, has brought me to a level of peace and self-acceptance that I hadn’t before known and I feel ready to engage the world in a new way.
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