Rediscovering beauty through struggle

I just wanted to share with you some of the images from the shoot I recently did with one of my clients. Her story is one of struggle, resilience, hope, and rebirth... her journey, fighting cancer, left marks on her body which we decided to highlight with golden paint following the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi where broken ceramic is repaired with gold as a way to embrace its story rather than hide its imperfections.

Please read below a summary of her journey, a reminder of the power of the human spirit:

“On February 13th, 2014, my life changed forever. While Washington DC was facing a blizzard named Snowmageddon, I was on life support for 6 hours at Georgetown Hospital. Where I thought I was having a small 1-2 centimeter tumor removed

I woke up to discover that I had a rare cancer called Sarcoma in fat tissue that normally would kill patients within 4 – 6 months. To save my life, the hospital removed my rib, my right core muscles, my nerves, my fat tissues, and cut my diaphragm, which caused my lungs and eventually my body to collapse. I spent the next 3 years fighting the world because I had a daughter to care for, I needed insurance so fought hard to keep my job, and started a divorce after my husband chose not to provide the help I needed in my cancer journey.

I learned more about real love when my friends and church drove me to all my medical appointment (8-10 a week) because I was too medicated and weak to care for myself. So, with faith, the right support system and 38 medical specialists, I was able to learn to walk again, to gain weight after going down to 89 pounds, to recognize what kind of love I needed and to refocus my attention on what matters most – raising and loving my daughter.

Cancer helped me gained the strength to love myself for who I am and how I was created. I look at life differently and I live with purpose. Now, five years later, I look at my scars from the surgery, the burns on my skin from radiation, and the tattoo markers used to line me up in the radiation machine as beauty….you are looking at the art of survivor’s evidence!