“I was wild until I was tamed by shame.” - Untamed, Glennon Doyle As a little girl I was wild and full of life and wonder. I saw the world with an immense amount of curiosity and longed for open fields, creeks, ponds and lakes. Places I could get my hands and feet dirty. I wanted to move my body to music and twirl and shimmy without abandon. I wanted freedom and wholeness and the ability to experience and showcase who I was fully and belly laugh until crying because I wanted life to be experienced to the fullest and I didn't hold back. I thought that was how life was meant to be lived. I had questions and a longing to understand how the world around me worked along with a need to understand the array of feelings and sensations that ran through my body. I was labeled the weird one. The one who didn't truly have a place but somewhere along my journey of growing up I learned how a girl should act and how a woman should behave. I learned shame through punishment and whispers. The names I was called and the looks I was given. I didn’t realize how those small moments in my younger years affected me on an even deeper level than some of those bigger moments. My whole life I felt like there was something wrong with me. Like I was the odd one out for feeling and being who I am. I always felt like I was dirty and immoral by the way I was treated so differently. It wasn't until recently that I started to look back at some of those moments and unpack the damage they had on me as a woman. Somewhere along the way I stopped being curious and started living in fear and shame. I was disgusted by my thoughts and longings and buried parts of myself down so deep trying to play the part of a good respectable girl and woman. Every time a part of me surged to the forefront I was immediately reminded why those parts needed to be hidden away. I remember watching other girls who had more freedom than me and wondered why I was treated differently. That feeling of shame settled in deeper, whispering “it's because there's a darkness inside of you, and they feel it.” Growing up in the church that feeling got louder and deeper so I hid it down further until it was nearly forgotten. I chose a mask and I held on for dear life hoping that if I played the right role no one would see through me. So I became the ideal good girl, always following rules, always polite, always trying to make those around me happy, comfortable and proud. I lost myself along the way. I lost my sense of self and worth and my voice. I played the part while the small curious full of life and questions little girl inside me stopped screaming, because I refused to listen. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized I couldn't hide her anymore. She was slipping past all the walls I had built around her and she was fighting for her freedom. She was fighting for us to start living because up until this point I was merely existing and surviving. I was lifeless and numb. The process of unbecoming all the things I had fought so hard to become over the years was messy. I felt so much shame as I started being honest with myself about who I was and who I wanted to be. It was the opposite of everything I had been taught, but I knew I had to do it if I was going to try and break the pattern for my kids. It's a pattern I still try to break to this day fourteen years later. I now live my life for me and I try to teach my kids to live their life for them. It's hard because that little whisper inside of me still wants me to believe that I am shameful but I have never felt more worthy and full of life as I have when living it truthfully, authentically and fully. How I got here is simple but anything but easy. I started sharing pieces of myself through writing, which then turned into sharing openly on social media until piece by piece I found out I wasn’t alone and that what I had been taught wasn’t actually true and that was so freeing. To learn that so many women felt the way I did is heartbreaking but also refreshing because it gave me a sense of “I’m normal” that I never had before. All my life I felt like I was too much because I was told and treated like I was by the wrong people. Now I embrace my passion, opinions, voice and emotions. I embrace my womanhood and sensuality and I embrace my body in a whole new way. All the things that I was shamed for are the things that make me powerful. They are the things that inspire others and connect me to other women and to myself and nature. I now realize that shame was used to tame the wild that is and has always resided inside of me because it was too hard to control me otherwise. “I am woman, hear me roar” is a sentiment that didn't fit the narrative I grew up in but it is everything I embody now. I choose to show up for my life in the way I was always meant to. Fully as me, in all of my power. Boudoir Photography has been a huge extension of that. Learning to embrace that side of myself, the sexy, powerful, wild woman has been so healing and freeing. It's given me another space to see myself as I am and to grow my confidence in the woman I am continuing to become with every single day that passes. It gives you the chance to explore different sides of your personality and to embody that side you don’t let out as often as you should in a space that feels safe and welcoming. It allows you to see yourself through the eyes of the artist you work with and it lets you free yourself from the shame that tells you that you aren’t worthy of taking up that space. Reminder, you are! I continue sharing my heart, words and body online because I want other women to see and know that the power I found in myself is inside of them as well. We are all different but we all long to live our lives aligned with who we truly are. Alive. Wild. Free. -Sky Edwards
