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If the idea of picking up your camera and taking a selfie feels SO outside of your comfort zone that you don’t even know where to begin.
Be Your Own Beloved is for you.
If you see all sorts of confident selfies on Instagram and wonder if they struggle at all like you do.
Be Your Own Beloved is for you.
If you struggle to be in any photos at all, be it someone else taking the photo or you.
Be Your Own Beloved is for you.
If you haven’t been in photos in a very long time because you fear what you’ll see.
Be Your Own Beloved is for you.
Or if you are a photographer and know how to rock the camera, but resist turning the camera on yourself.
Be Your Own Beloved is for you.
I think it might be a common misperception that in order to take a class like Be Your Own Beloved you have to already know how to rock a selfie, right?
Or that it is for people who already feel confident in front of the camera and in their photos in general.
Not so much.
Now, that isn’t to say that there aren’t folks in the class who do know how to rock a selfie already! Of course there are and they totally thrive in the class, but it isn’t only for those who already feel comfortable taking selfies. It is especially for those of you for whom it is outside of your comfort zone.
Why? Because when I first started taking self-portraits years ago, I was deeply paralyzed by the stories I had soaked into the skin about the worthiness of my body in the world, let alone in a photo. I was filled with self-hate and by no means did I think taking a self-portrait was going to help that. I just wanted to be in my own visual story and see what unfolded.
It unfolded all these years later to this place where taking selfies is an every day part of my continual healing of body image and my relationship to myself and I know I can make it look really ‘easy’ to take a selfie. It isn’t always easy, but it has been the unexpected path to finding a peaceful relationship with my own body and how I saw it.
And I created this class to provide people with the tools to do the same for themselves.
So if this terrifies you, that is a good thing. It means there is something potentially transformative awaiting you, if you want to say YES to it.
I thought I’d share a little behind the scenes story of how Be Your Own Beloved came to be that might give you a bit of insight into why you don’t need to have ever taken a selfie before to take the class.
Years before I started teaching Be Your Own Beloved I was teaching a different self-portraiture class called You are Your Own Muse. There was a similar energy to it, that you get to define how you see yourself, yet at the time ‘selfies’ as a norm was still emerging and this class was way more focused on the technical side and artistic side of taking self-portraits. I would definitely sneak in the self-love element but it wasn’t at all the sole focus. I LOVED that class and had such a blast teaching it and seeing all the incredible photos the participants created.
Yet after offering a number of sessions I started really clearly noticing that the content of this class helped those who were already rockin’ the self-portrait before they even found the class thrive. There seemed to be lots of people who were quietly taking the class and not participating and it got me wondering if the class was really serving them. Like with any class (even Be Your Own Beloved) there will always be a certain percentage of people who don’t participate and I don’t take it personally, yet I couldn’t get them out of my mind.
So I sat with these questions for a while:
Who were those women who were quietly on the periphery of my class and what did they need?
Who do I most want to serve with these classes?
What do I most want to be teaching?
Who is the woman that I most want to help take self-portraits?
How could I make a class to serve her?
This was a turning point and that is when Be Your Own Beloved began.
Of course I’m not going to be able to provide everyone with what they need, but I felt like this class not only what my heart most wanted to teach but I felt like it was created for those who I most wanted to say YES to these classes. And I wanted to talk more openly about what I had been doing to heal and I hoped that it would be helpful to them.
The first session of Be Your Own Beloved made it so clear that indeed…these activities could deeply shift one’s experience of seeing themselves in photos, all the participant needed to do was to really show up and give them a try. When they did, it could be transformative.
I still couldn’t reach through the computer and make them pick up the camera, but that became part of the process. Saying yes is your first step of bravery and then the next is picking up the camera to choose to try. These both are a big part of the act of self-love and self-care in the class…as much as the photos themselves.
It was hard to say goodbye to the older class, but I felt so clear that this was the class that could most help women and that I felt truly alive in teaching. I felt like there was already so much out there in terms of classes & photographic support for those people who wanted to explore the artistic or technical side. Not only that, but it was the quiet ones, the more new-to-selfies folks that I really wanted to serve. It was those of you who like me, may not have ever felt beautiful or confident and want to build a loving relationship with their self-image (even if it took a while) that I felt so clearly focused on creating content for. Plus, I think it was the course I had meant to be teaching all along.
So this was all behind why I stopped teaching the Muse class and stepped into teaching Be Your Own Beloved.
Immediately, the very first session, I knew I had made the right decision. I knew that I could far more of a difference in this world if I stopped shying away from hiding self-love behind the technical side and let it be in the forefront.
So this is for you.
You don’t need to know how to take a self-portrait or a selfie.
You don’t need to feel like it is even possible to use selfies as a tool for self-love.
You don’t need to like how you see yourself in a photo.
You don’t need to hate how you see yourself in a photo either.
This class is for those of us who just want to be open to a new story of how we might see ourselves in a photo and who wonder “Could anything really change within 28 days”. I’ve gotta tell you…it can.
Be Your Own Beloved is simply about openly exploring selfies as a tool for seeing yourself with compassion and creating an ongoing way for you to support & connect with yourself on a deeper level.
P.S….If it really scares you to sign up, don’t hesitate to use the contact form to connect with me for a little extra encouragement before or after you sign up!
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