Soft Launch
While I entertained the idea of community, I actively rejected the one I grew up in because if it’s limiting beliefs And bigoted ideas.
I don’t know what it is I’m actually trying to say most of the time. I am definitely a person who has struggled with vulnerability and softness, and always been more comfortable with fighting for my loved ones and wearing armor, and protecting myself and my family and working in an individual, isolated fashion. (I’ve spoken to my therapist ad nauseum about it… haha)
Don’t exactly know what it was leading up to this latest election cycle that made me develop a sense of calm and community. I, of course, could chuck it up to the many astrological events that have been happening. The celestial coincidences that lineup with my need to shed armor, connect with community, and engage in vulnerability with people , I hadn’t previously really are astounding.
I have never felt apathy in strong amounts, I’ve always been a person who cares deeply about my passions and my interests, and the people that I love and while I entertained the idea of community, I actively rejected the one I grew up in because if it’s limiting beliefs And bigoted ideas. I know that no community is perfect, but I am willing and ready to drop my armor, engage with communities, provide proof of my care and deep commitment to vulnerability and passion, and change.
Idealism has always been the bedrock of my teaching career, believing that teenagers are the best among our society while being called absolutely crazy by most of my close friends. And while that may be true, I absolutely believe that idealism paired with an insatiable need to learn and grow will carry me through whatever is coming.
We won’t win a war with better weapons, we win by not fighting in the ways that they expect us to. By healing and loving and growing together, by strengthening our communities and our commitment to society instead of individualism, to show and teach our children and the next generations , that apathy has way too high price. The price is the lives of our most marginalized communities and the sanity of those who were trying to help them.
And while I’m rambling into my Notes app, as I’m staring at the books that I’ve been devouring, and the notes that I’ve been taking, all I feel is a huge sense of pride, maybe for the first time, that I get to live here in the United States and connect with people who share my same ideas, and whose view of the future matches mine.
No more apathy. No more individualism.
We win with softness, we win with community, we win with commitment & engagement.
A Year of No Contact
“This is not to say that most adult children choose estrangement lightly, or that they pay no social cost. In my experience, most adult children estrange themselves only after a long period of trying to have a better relationship with the parent.” – Joshua Coleman
The above quote from Coleman illustrates the desperation that adult children engage with when deciding to estrange themselves from family. This family can be just one parent, both parents, siblings, aunts and uncles or an entire family. There are different types of estrangement for every level of friction.
How did a movie nearly destroy me? Well…. One of my partners and I went to see Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. And if you haven’t seen it… holy crap, go see it. There’s a reason it’s winning all kinds of awards. I MAY or may not get into spoiler territory so fair warning!
The main plot of the movie is this relationship between a mother and daughter of an Asian immigrant family. It progresses through a WILD sci-fi ride of multiversal madness in its truest form, but at its core always comes back to the strained relationship between mother and daughter. The daughter is gay, and brings her girlfriend home and they discuss just introducing her as her “friend.” (felt that one) There is a moment where at the end **spoilers** the mom (Michelle Yeoh) tells her father that she “won’t do to her daughter what he did to her” and then I lost it. She broke the trauma cycle FOR her daughter. Why couldn’t mine do the same? Right… the crying…
And I wanna say it was a cute emo girl crying… it was NOT. This was full-on sobbing. Mascara and snots everywhere running down my face in a fairly packed theater. Didn't stop when the movie ended either…. Oh nooooooo. Continued for another two hours of just gut-wrenching sobs. I’m fairly certain my partner thought I was broken. I’m not a huge public cryer, especially not big dramatic sobbing, but this felt like validation and an example of all the understanding and love and support that was never afforded to me and never would be. The entire experience was so painful and so cathartic and freeing, I felt like a lifetime's worth of expectations had been lifted off of me.
After this episode of catharsis, I felt freer and more secure in my decision. I knew I could never change or force somebody to be something that they weren’t. I forgave my family for their ignorance, if only in my own head and heart, and I focused on my own chosen and homegrown family.
I chose complete physical estrangement, after years of emotional estrangement. After SO MANY years of trying to set healthy boundaries it finally came to a head that was untenable. There was no going back after certain things were said and threatened. I had tried temporary estrangements before, even up to several months. But it always resulted in some fake better behavior for a couple weeks and then back to the same old shit.
What was the same old shit? Invalidating my sexuality (bisexual), harsh criticism of my parenting style, gross rejection of my family make up (poly’d open triad) as well as many philosophical, scientific, religious, political and social responsibility opinions. I’m a pretty open, wildly liberal, yay science and vaccines, pro-choice, pro-environment person. Yes, I can be abrasive, and loud and opinionated, but it stems from many years of being forced to keep it all inside. I’m a passionate person, and moreover I like to think I have compassion for all people. Even those who harmed me for so long.
So what does estrangement look like in this modern age? It was surprisingly easy. I know physically the act of just NOT seeing people isn’t all that difficult, especially if you didn’t see them a lot beforehand. It was the little things that took time to manage and figure out. No texting, no release of the kids' information. My family had already long blocked me on social media for my “embarrassing opinions” so that was something I didn’t have to do. But for the most part, it was simple enough to put that distance between us.
So how’d it go? At first, as expectedly terrible as I thought. I was still feeling a lot of grief over the relationship I wish I could’ve had, the mother she could’ve been, the best friend sisters that were supposed to be built-in for life. I was grieving all of that, and feeling those emotions. But, much like any abusive relationship, where one person is constantly being taken advantage of, eventually the logic and reason were the loudest voices in my head. There were some very mean and hurtful attempts to get me to rescind my no contact rule that resulted in my having to block numbers from my kids devices. I kept mine unblocked and deleted everything that was full of the same vitriol, I never responded after saying what I had to say.
I HAVE to mention that I did not do this “willy-nilly” or without support. I was under the care of an amazing therapist with whom I had discussed this very same scenario endlessly. I was prepared emotionally, and had strategies to discuss it with partners and my kids. It was a very supportive environment with lots of coping mechanisms and strategies laid out and it still took a heavy emotional toll.
Several of my friends and my partners’ family members have commented that I seem “lighter”, “less stressed”, “way less anxious”, and “happier overall.” All direct quotes. I hold no anger towards my OG family anymore, they did the best they could or were able to at the time and while that didn’t work for me, it worked for them. So now we can live our parallel lives much happier without each other in them.
What now? So now, I continue to focus on my chosen family, growing family and friend bonds that are rooted in mutual respect, love, appreciation and align with our values, lifestyle and choices. I will encourage my children to be as authentic as they’d like to be without fear of rejection or loss of love. I’ll love my partners with the same vehement determination and protection, and care I always have. From here, we just live and hope for the best.
The Reeducation of Maria V
“When you KNOW better, DO better”
*****TW for family/emotional stuff*******
This has always been one of my absolute favorite quotes. There was a time, long ago, when naive little Maria spouted the same rhetoric that she grew up with. She did NOT know better.
Messages of hate, close-mindedness, brash and unrealistic expectations of marginalized communities. These are not easy things to admit, BUT it was the culture I was raised in. There are a lot of things I'm grateful for in my heritage, things that are very important to me, but messages rooted in bigotry will not survive and I won't pass on that generational trauma to my own kids.
I can distinctly remember constantly feeling really uncomfortable with these opinions, that when they came out of my mouth, felt wrong deep in my gut. Of course, that meant that I threw myself into it whole-heartedly to continue to play the "good-girl" oldest child that I was. Always towing the company line, always doing what was right, and never causing too much of a stir.
I was fucking miserable.
I was constantly at odds with my conscience about my family's beliefs versus how I thought people should be treated. I didn't want to be "soft and foolhardy" as was the ultimate travesty.
College and the years after changed a lot. I met new people, got out of my bubble, discovered things about myself that I had LONG buried, and started bringing real Maria to the surface again. SLOWLY, painstakingly, with many many bumps in the road. Reeducation of your beliefs is never easy, but it was necessary to grow into who I knew I was inside.
It was MANY years of educating myself, and talking to others, and ultimately my relationships with my family members didn't survive my growth. They were or are unable, uncomfortable, or just don't want to accept this new version of me. And that's OKAY.
I feel more comfortable with myself. I KNOW what it is I fight for. I KNOW that my want and need to help others and give a shit about human lives is not a weakness, but a great and wonderful thing that binds humanity together. I wanted to DO BETTER, so I found out how to KNOW MORE.
It's been a fight and a struggle to become this version of me, I won't be letting her go anytime soon. 🥰
A History Lesson…
What came first… the business or the egg?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
It started so long ago for me with photography that I barely know which came first.. .the business or the egg (hobby). My dad is an Italian immigrant and one of the first things he purchased with his KFC money, was a camera. That camera got passed to me in high school and it was like the art form I had always been waiting for. I flipped around lenses spent hours in the darkroom at school (cutting my other classes), and making what I thought was super impactful and meaningful art. Of course, what I was making were solidly ok photographs, that won a couple state competitions, but my love for photography grew.
In college I continued photographing all my friends and our projects, and started doing little jobs here and there. Family portraits, parties, little events. Friends who wanted to get dressed up and just have fun in the park.
As I became a teacher (and taught photography to high schoolers) I realized that my passion was in also photographing people, not just the art form, or teaching it. I started my first business in 2008, when I has only been teaching for 2 years, and I was 23. As all we photographers are want to do, I photographed EVERYTHING. Weddings, Senior Portraits, Family Portraits, Reunions, Funerals (yup… weird), Newborns, Pets… everything. Until I photographed Boudoir.
I went to a learning session to how to pose boudoir clients, and it was me, and four creepy older dudes, with a young 20-something model in a hotel room, and our old dude instructor. The models audible sigh of relief when I walked in was palatable. The instructor posed her in a many variety of poses that were beautiful but didn’t showcase what made her gorgeous. We each got a turn posing and photographing, to use the photos for out portfolio. I went last, of course, and we tried a bunch of different poses, and outfits, and scenes that the others hadn’t thought of. Not because they weren’t professionals, but because they weren’t humans who identified as women.
The model and I exchanged phone numbers and we walked out of the session together. I later sent her the images I took, and she used them for her own modeling portfolio.
Creating a safe, loving, and comfortable environment for a woman to feel as sexy as she wants was now my new mission. I started photographing Boudoir and Women’s Intimate Portraits in 2010, and haven’t looked back since.
It’s been a long road of learning, taking breaks, refreshing, going back to basics, and always always putting my clients needs first. But in the end, this is what I love doing. Inspiring women to see themselves how I see them, and how the people who love them see them. Beautiful and gorgeous and authentic.
I have to be in front?
New Headshots, New Me.
TW: depression/ miscarriage/anxiety
***Let’s talk about growth.
The girl on the right, with the magnificent blow out was a fraud. I was desperately trying to hang on to something that I needed to let go. The death of one side of my business to give birth to the fulfilling boudoir side. ******
The girl on the right had just suffered through a miscarriage, was depressed, barely scraped out of a 48 hour psych hold, and was trying to hold her little family together. While teaching full time, being a mother to a toddler, and trying to be a good partner. It was TOO much. I’m hiding. I was hiding all of me. Looking at this picture gives me anxiety now because I see the tension in my grip, how I hide my body that failed me, my sad eyes but toothy smile. Oooof this girl.
The woman on the left however, has accepted her body, her losses, dealt with a large amount of her trauma, through therapy, shadow work, a LOT of introspection and reevaluating what matters. There is so much emotional weight gone from the woman I am now. It’s allowing me to grow into something else. Be present for the things I want to be present for… I’m ready for a big jump. I’m happier (never all the way, come on!) and definitely excited to tackle all sorts of new challenges and opportunities that I have coming. Get ready!
Taking these photos was a breath of fresh air. I just threw on a shirt, did some light make up and ran outside with Nick, and I’m more happy, more authentic and I truly… FINALLY feel like me. Just Maria.
Miss Jackie D
Miss Jackie
Miss Jackie D SLAYED her session! Check out her gorgeous looks below:
The imitable Miss Liz
Miss Liz
Holy Damn. When Liz booked a boudoir shoot with me, I thought, oh hell yeah we’re going to have fun! I did not expect to make a new friend for life, bond over the craziest shit, and watch her do gymnastics in the studio naked HAHA She’s a PRO ya’ll.
