I am scared to share these photographs and writings with you. If asked why, I may be tempted to nonchalantly say I have no idea.  Except that would be a lie.  Deep down, I know why: Because I am a rebel with a cause.  Because I want to say fuck you to our society’s view on a woman’s body. Because I don’t want to be a photographer who only shows work of thin “perfect”-looking women.  Because it’s my belief that a body with curves and butt-dimples which has just given birth to another human should also be praised and seen as beautiful.

I gained 50 pounds during my pregnancy with my now-5-week old son Sequoia Narayan.  If feeling self-conscious on the road to getting bigger daily heading into his birth was scary, I am realizing it was nothing compared to how I feel in my body without the excuse of a growing human inside. Now I simply feel fat. I know this may expose me to a host of responses ranging from pity to jealous anger. But it is my truth.

I had been active until the morning I went into labor, ate mostly greens and rarely indulged in sweets!  ”So what HAPPENED?!?!”  I kept wondering…  The answer is, LIFE happened.  It’s true I had an easy birth and have a beautiful healthy son, so the last thing on my mind should be the flesh-rolls of my stomach & back, the dimples in my booty, and the dark circles under my eyes.  But I am here to confess: It is a struggle to feel beautiful right now.  I am a WONDERFUL caregiver and feed my son all day from my newly-swollen breasts. I have stayed up most of every single night of his first 5 weeks of life feeding him & caring for him, which makes me feel truly SELFLESS.

Yet, guess what Sequoia has also taught me?  That I am also incredibly SELFISH!  I like alone time gardening or being in a bubble bath.  I love my job and nurturing my business.  I like sacred time all to myself.  I NEED to exercise and dance! So, tearfully alive, I  am setting out on the path of finding the blissful balance of embracing both my selflessness and my selfishness.

What does any of this have to do with photographing my newly plump and naked body?  I suppose it would be that I selfishly want to BURN the veil that hides the beauty of a body that has gained 50 pounds in order to give birth to another human.  I want to selfishly inspire women who are not our society’s idea of beautiful to feel Perfectly Gorgeous.  I want to make rich compost with the feelings of unworthiness and lovingly plant and nurture authentic seeds of love and belief that our bodies ARE worthy.  Worthy of love and appreciation no matter what shape we may be.  I selfishly want to show divinity where we have been taught as a culture to quickly dislike and judge.  Every body, including my own, is a map to an individual and a non-replicable story: That, dear reader, is truly beautiful.

Perhaps my lack of sleep has given me more courage to show you these vulnerable photographs.  Maybe it has assisted me in finding true freedom from caring what others think of me even more than before.  Maybe my son has shown me that being selfless and selfish is the medicine I have always needed.  Maybe being a mother is more dynamic and difficult than I previously thought.  Maybe I have never lived out of my Heart as fully as I am now.  Maybe I just want you to know that you are perfect just as you are in that body of yours and I am willing to show you my scary vulnerability in hopes to inspire you.

Please hold these photogrpahs and my vulnerability in the palms of your feet, hands and heart.  Try and be free from judgment.  Try to let go of needing to explain my fear and joy.  Someone once told Frida Khalo she was a wonderful surrealist painter.  She responded that she was not a surrealist painter, but instead she simply painted her reality.

My Mantra:  Fake it ’till you make it.

The true key to happiness is our choice to BE happy.  Maybe we need community.  Maybe we need to dance.  Maybe we need to climb mountains…  Open your wings and FLY.  Your perfect body will follow your heart if you choose to “live your life like it’s golden.”

These are my first thoughts put to paper with a beautifully-perfect 7-pound-and-some-ounces baby attached to me, sucking at my breast.  As I sleepily search for words to write to accompany the photographs I took last week when the entire family was in town to meet Sequoia, my sweet 11 day old son, I can not help but pause frequently and stare at the perfection feeding from my body’s milk.  Every little sound makes my heart melt.  Every movement a source of pride to my soul.  Every inhale and exhale a source of peace for me.  I feel so beyond blessed.

We had all been anxiously waiting:  Five days had to pass beyond his  supposed due-date before he began his grand entrance!  My mother and sister had flown in to help Alok and me, and they began to worry he wouldn’t come before they had to return home, a disappointing proposition, but we can’t time such arrivals, can we?  Hundreds of people were praying and giving me amazing herbal remedies to get my cervix to efface and to help contractions begin.  I even danced at 10 months and four days bulging at my own Friday night dance class that was being subbed by my dear friend.  It was juicy!  I gently danced with my enormous belly and at the end of class I asked all the dancers and drummers to encircle me and Baby to send inviting energy to my Boy.  I asked the group to hold in their mind’s eye one thing that they absolutely loved about this Planet.  Finally, I asked them to tell him it’s safe out here and that he was surrounded by love. Would you believe it, he listened: that very night, I went into gentle labor. With grace, my son Sequoia was born 2 days later on 2.12.12 at 3:49pm on a peaceful and perfect Sonoran desert Sunday…

Sunday morning my contractions were 8 minutes apart and quite startling to say the least.  I made no rush to get to the birth center.  I showered for the last time with my endearing and enormously ripe belly, climbed into a white dress, put on my handmade jade earrings and asked my mom to make breakfast.  In between contractions, I ate local eggs with local spinach scrambled into deliciousness.  I sipped perfect coffee.  I lit some candles.  I danced.  And in my own time, At 10am, I told Alok that I was indeed ready to go to the birth center.

There were no cars on the road.  The sun was shinning and the air was cool.  On the ride, Alok and I discussed our baby’s name and laughed about how strangely perfect the day was.  I gripped the leather seats during contractions as they increased in intensity.  Auspiciously, we calmly arrived at the birth center just as another baby was being born!  We were shown to our sweet, private room which had a four-post wooden queen-sized bed and a cavernous birth tub, put on soft music, lit candles again and took out my drum from the Taos Pueblo.  The midwife came in, checked me and supportively told me I was already 6cm dilated!  I danced again.

I moved about the room in an improvised choreography of positions. No machines were attached to me and only my family was around plus my dear friend Kacey, the midwife and the nurse. Alok and I even went for a stroll outside in the middle of my labor!   I squatted on the bed, danced on the floor, got in and out of the tub’s warm water.  As the contractions got more intense,  my sensitive and gorgeous partner Alok guided me through affirmations:  ”Say it, Jade: Tell me you can DO THIS!” he would compassionately command and I would repeat.  When my wails would ascend to the sky, he helped guide them back to a low, belly rumble.  He held out his arms for me to grasp and cried when I cried.  He reminded me how strong I am, how beautiful this journey was.

I began to become so utterly exhausted as I entered active labor.  Thoughts of emergency birth stories that I had heard over the last 10 months whirled in my head and fear knocked at the door to my heart:  I wondered if I could do it without some sort of intervention.  The sensation of the contractions were like nothing else I had ever experienced and I still can not find words to describe them.  I had been in labor for 4 hours at the birth center when the midwife checked me again:  I had progressed to 8cm dilated!  The contractions intensified yet again signaling transition and ‘bearing down’.  I squatted on the edge of the bed, I lay on my side with my left leg up and my foot pressing into Alok’s arm.  I was overtaken by a snake-like undulation and a deep uncontrollable urge to expel my bowels.  Sequoia’s head had begun to crown!

I looked at Alok and without words we knew we should get back into the water for this dance’s finale.  We climbed into the tub and Alok got behind me in the water.  My family circled us and were “ohmmmm”-ing to help my wailing stay low.  My water, intact until now, finally broke and with the very next contraction, Sequoia Narayan Appadurai danced his way into this world with one final undulation of my uterus. Magic. He came out of the water in a flash and was crying immediately. As soon as Sequoia was put onto my chest, he lifted his sweet newborn head and looked me right in the eye, silently choosing to connect visually with his mother.  His head was perfectly round, his eyes were a deep sea blue and he had soft night-black hair all over his head.  He was perfect.  My life has not been the same since that moment.  I have become quiet and am at a loss for words.  My reclusiveness has multiplied and I spend my days staring at this little creature that did not exist physically 11 months ago.  My passion is now  feeding him, smelling him, asking him about the mystical magic of being innately inter-connected to that which I cannot see….

Beautiful friends Tara and Jaimie took my placenta, dried it and made pills with it for me to take as a post pardom herbal remedy.  I take them every day.  I am amazed, still, by the outpouring of love and support I have been gifted thru this entire pregnancy and birth experience.  I am not sure how I got so blessed.  I am not sure when I became so free.  I do know, however, that without all the hundreds of emails, without the $5000 that was raised by my community for Sequoia and I’s first month together, I could not do this.  It take a village:  to raise a child AND to support new parents…  Thank you, My Sweet Village…

And so now as I finish up these words, he has fallen asleep on my lap.  I am in tremendous awe of my body:  innately creating and birthing life all by herself and now producing food for this new two legged.  My female body gave birth to a perfect male human and I finally understand: Goddesses REALLY ARE everywhere…  I ask you, dear reader, will you go hug a mother today and honor her…

Here is a series of photographs we took last week when Alok’s dad, his dad’s beautiful wife and my family, aka “Sequoia’s Maidens” were in town.  Everyone has left now and it’s just the three of us plus Guapo, my 12 year old Golden retriever.  It’s quiet in our beautiful home in the Barrio Metalico.  The Desert Spring light is flooding in form the south glass door.  Our gardens are coming to life, our rainwater cistern is full.  The only music is  Sequoia’s ocasional cry when he wants more milk….  We are beyond blessed.

It’s nearly time to part ways now.  The honor of facilitating the making of a human body in my own body is nearly over.  This belly will never be this exact belly ever again.  My Son will never again receive nourishment from his umbilical cord.  I will never feel him slowly stretch and move against the inside of my abdominal wall as if her were dancing a sacred warrior dance.  These last days are the end of his fascinating and rhythmic hiccups inside of my own being, like an intimate drum beat only I will ever know and which makes me so very proud.  I will never again feel for his head to see if it is still pointing down.  I will never share this body in this way, ever again, with this human.  Now we prepare to become 2.

Where do we come from?  How does that which did not exist before come to BE?  How did you get to be you and how did I get to be me?  10 months ago, this Human inside of me, wiggling and moving as I type these words, did not exist physically.  And now he is about to join our Planet Tribe.

These past 10 months have been joyous, scary, nauseating, beautiful, emotional, draining, exhilarating and Divinely Perfect in all of it’s imperfections.  For the first time in my 32 years on this planet, I humbly and gratefully stepped out of my own way in order to let Spirit and the Ancestors guide what is to Be.  In 39 weeks, I have sunk to my lowest low and risen to my all time highest high, and gained 40 pounds of mass and now I just want to be silent.  Silent so that I can hear the stars and the approaching full Moon which will announce my Son’s Due Date.  Silent so that Baby Boy can hear my Taos Pueblo Drum and the burning of sacred white sage that I spread around us with wild turkey feathers.  Silent so that I can hear the rich conversation of the birds outside my window calling in the Magic that humans can so easily miss.  Silent so that I can hear Great Mother Spirit guide me to my own innate wisdom.  Silent so that I can hear the wave of water which has been inside rush out like a mystical red carpet made from Sea Water and Dolphin Breath.  I need silence so that I can hear my Son’s heartbeat and his call as we prepare to touch skin to skin for the very first time in the History of Man Kind.  I seek silence now to hear my own tears fall out of my tired eyes onto my wonder-filled red and heaving chest.

I have loved Frida Khalo since I was a little girl having been raised among wild and eccentric artists in Mexico.  Like Friducha, I find myself exploring my body and the reality which accompanies it with curiosity and intrigue;  sometimes very judgmental but more often with a forgiving eye.  I am not shy in my body:  whether I am what society would label skinny and fit or lumpy and bumpy at one time or another, I do not worry what you, dear reader, will think of me.   I respect you whether you dislike or love me.  I lovingly expect nothing from you.  My body has been a continuous and evolving canvas and I take great pleasure in creating art with it; even when it scares me.  I move this body to Guinea and Congolese rhythms not because I want you to think me a splendid or imperfect dancer.  No, I move this body to channel my Spirit Guides and my Ancestors.  I do not photograph my nude body for you to compliment my beauty or point out my ugliness or to have you comment on my courage or on what you might think a disgrace to be exposed.  Not at all.  I photograph myself because I am passionate about the Human form.  I am eternally fascinated how skin, hair and pupils reflect light.  I love my body as much as I love yours.  I love my vulnerability and pain as much as I hold yours tender in the palms of my heart.  I honor my authentic exquisiteness as much as I ecstatically bow to yours.  I see no problem in contrasting opinions because to me authentic opinions and thoughts and wisdom all boil down to the same exact ancient root:  Evidence That We Are Alive Together.

Self Portraits and photographs i took of another beautiful Pregnant Goddess.  Thank you thank you thank you.

My life as I know it is about to change:  forever.  In about 4 weeks, most likely under the guidance & protection of the full moon of February 7th and surrounded by my own tribe, I will give birth to my son.

I have no expectations of how the birth of my son will unfold.  I know not where the choreography of the birth will take place:  in a birth tub or in a Goddess squat, or if I will need the assistance of a hospital.  I do, however, know one thing: the word “love” will have an entirely new definition for me.  My heart, like my uterus which has grown 5 times it’s original size from 8 months ago, will expand and receive for the first time ever sensations of ecstasy previously unknown…

Many of my family and friends have lovingly shared with me all the fascinating things that are about to change in my life:  Poop, pee, throw up EVERYWHERE!!.  No sleep, no time alone, etc etc etc EVER AGAIN!!  ”It’s so hard, get ready for the most challenging and wonderful time of you life!”  I love all of this wisdom and I cannot help but smile:  Poop and pee and throw-up and no sleep and hard times are who I am!  I have been juggling 7 things at once since I was 7 years old!  Hardship is where I SHINE!  So can I do all of this while also facilitating a human who has chosen me as his birth channel into this world?  I say YES!

I am so confidant in the ease of this transition of “my life never being the same” because I have, and you can quote me, the most EPIC community in the whole entire friggin’ WORLD!  I have Grandmothers and Mothers and Sisters and Brothers and Grandpa’s and little ones waiting to care for my boy.  I have dance camps waiting for us to dance and cry and laugh at; I have Africa and India waiting for us to visit and to educate us.  I have a tribe with arms wide open! And so I am at ease.  I have no interest in being my boy’s only Mother.  I am very much a follower and believer of the wisdom of Sobonfu Somè.  In her books she explains that raising children in her village in West Africa is a COMMUNITY experience.  The 2 parents are key players in the raising of the child, but it’s actually the responsibility of the ENTIRE community and the PLEASURE of the Tribe in providing the child with all the wisdom she or he will need.  I am walking evidence that it takes a village to raise a child.  Sobonfu gently reminds us that it also takes a village to support new parents.  I know so little in comparison to what my community knows!  A a whole, I am confidant this child wiggling in my enormous expanded uterus as I type these very words will have everything he could ever need. This realization makes me giddy with excitement…

Call it a tribe.  Call it a clan.  Call it a network.  Call it family or call it your crew.  The fact is: we all need one.

Here is the beautiful Tucson Yoga Tribe.  I love them a whole lot.  Thank you all for allowing me to play with you big kids!

I have heard hundreds of confessions of sorrow by now.  I have listened to thousands of stories of suffering.  I have held in my very arms countless sisters and a few brothers as they wept and shared their feelings of utter unworthiness and despair.  These confessions used to be only on my massage table where my clients lay both physically and emotionally naked and entirely vulnerable.  Quite often the confessions of un-connectedness, loneliness and self-loathing come from my dance students.  Lately the confessions have been in front of my camera.  Women come into my studio with shaky legs, feeling uncertain if they made the right decision to have a photo shoot with me.  They might not even know why they are there.  My sisters often feel ashamed that they are having photographs taken of themselves, as if they are doing a sinful act to honor their authentic beauty.  And most, at least 99.9%, are completely uncomfortable in their naked skin.  Whether they are what our society defines as fat or thin, they ALL share the same learned story that most of us have chosen to believe:  I am not good enough.  I am not beautiful.  I am not perfect.

When did we learn to be ashamed of our skin?  When did it become uncomfortable to be in our own skin?  When did we begin making our reality one of self-suffering and pain when examining our reflection in a mirror?  When did we learn the definition of “ugly” and “beautiful”?  Who gave us our definitions of “fat” and “thin”?  Who was it that convinced us that we were not good enough?  That we were not worthy of feeling “prefect”?  Who told us that were were imperfect?  Why did we choose to believe them?

There are people who have miraculously escaped form this belief system that was unconsciously and perhaps also consciously instilled into so many of us.  There are others who have re-written the lies into beautiful new truths of authentic beauty that are free of self-suffering.  There are those who still believe that humans could never be perfect.  There are others of us who have to make it a daily, intentional practice to be free from pain and to rewrite the pain into a lesson of beauty.  There are those of us that choose to see pain not as an ugly devil but instead as a sacred teacher that leads to even deeper perfection.

I once had a discussion with a scientist from the University of Arizona while on a backpacking trip in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  Under a crisp and clear night sky saturated with diamond-like constellations in Northern Arizona we discussed perfection.  I had recently re-read for the billionth time “The Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz.  I was high on redefining how i saw the world!  I was especially enamored with Don Miguel Ruiz’s theory on what he calls ”the biggest cop-out of our time”, that phrase:  ”nobody’s perfect”.  Like Ruiz, I believe we were born in perfection and we ARE perfect.  My scientist friend had a wonderful point that IF we are naturally perfect, how could we strive and evolve and become BETTER?  I didn’t see why I couldn’t be perfect right in that moment, evolve and learn and grow and dance and gather wisdom and still be perfect then too?

I mean, do we see a healthy beautiful baby born out of the vagina of another human and say, “Life is not perfect?”  Do we question the perfection of the female body which can MAKE an entire human in her own body, including a human with the opposite hormones and genitalia, while she lives her usual, everyday life?  Do we question the insane PERFECTION of the Himalayas, or the divine PERFECTION of the Amazon or the incredible perfection of a Sequoia tree?  LIFE is all of those things and WE are also life, so how could we not be PERFECT too?

I am no master of thinking I am perfect.  Lately I avoid the mirrors at all costs.  I am 40 pounds heavier than I was 8 months ago and my booty has a shake of it’s own.  I am one of the most OBSESSED people when it comes to the sacredness of a pregnant female body, yet I have to admit I feel large and awkward and puffy.  Yet every morning, before my feet touch the ceramic floor of my bedroom, I practice my gratitude mediation.  I am grateful for my baby’s hiccups in my belly!  I am grateful I am snuggled beneath a down comforter.  I am grateful that I have food in my kitchen and hot water in my bath.  I am grateful that I am creating life and redefining pain!  I am grateful that I have the opportunity to push a boy out of my body and have it feel perfect instead of painful.  I am grateful for all of the perfection that surrounds me…

There are a lot of different answers to these questions and a lot of opinions, and yet all I know is that when I see myself as perfect, I no longer need to take things personally. I no longer need to compete with other photographers or dancers or massage therapists and I can be free of the need to be beautiful or ugly.  I can just BE.  I choose to bathe in gratitude and practice my gratitude mediation for all the small and big things in my life.  I honestly BELIEVE in the perfection that we naturally are.  I believe that life is far more of a magician than I, and I will never call Life’s creation’s imperfect!  I no longer need to prove anything:  I just enjoy being perfect me gazing at perfect you.

It’s scientifically proven that happiness makes the human heart grow younger.  Happiness is the abundant side effect of being interconnected with those in our life that inspire us and to those we had no idea we could possibly love.  Happiness is the practice of forgiving those who have “harmed” us so we may be free from our suffering.  Happiness is practicing to gently embrace those who do not agree with our personal and authentic message.  Happiness is rewriting the I-Am-Not-Beautiful-Enough-I-Am-Not-Skinny-Enough-I-Am-Not-Sexy-Enough story that we have agreed to believe as truth when we look in the mirror.  Happiness is the choice in believing that yes, we ARE worthy of Brilliant Love!  Happiness is helping someone who needs our gifts.  Happiness is stepping out of victim role and into Authentic-Power-I-Can-Forgive-Role!  Happiness is being empty of judgement.  Happiness is allowing you, this Divine Reader, to think that I am crazy or to allow you to think I am brilliant because no matter what you choose to think about me, I am still going to choose to be happy.  Happiness is forgiving all that could possibly make us unhappy…

Some years back in his book “The Wisdom of Forgiveness” his Holiness the Dalai Lama tells a story of being hospitalized for stomach pain which, according to the Dalai Lama, was due to not listening to the advice of others to slow down within his very busy schedule.  However, while he was in the hospital in India, they did numerous tests on the Compassionate Teacher and the doctors were stunned that the Dalai Lama’s heart was in the condition of a 20 year old man.  His devout practice to Happiness, the Dalai Lama says, has kept his heart juicy and abundantly young.

Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in my home country, Los United States of Gringolandia.  See for yourself:  http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/  A generalized definition of Happiness I seem to witness in America tends to be first and foremost: Success (meaning money making success).  ”Happiness” is sold to us in grow-your-penis-longer pill bottles and weight loss powders and “Happy Meals”.  Our society tells us we will be happier if only we had the latest fashion and a blood-diamond ring.  I do not blame society or anyone in particular because we are responsible in what we choose to believe in.  So why do we choose to believe? Happiness has been defined, served to and BELIEVED as TRUTH by Americans via media for nearly a century….  Why?

Interconnectedness.  Being “empty” of want.  Forgiveness.  These are words that His Holiness the Dalai Lama uses to describe Happiness.

The most happiness I personally have gained in my life is learning HOW to forgive…  I LOVE forgiving.  When we cannot forgive those who have “hurt” us, the ONLY one who continues to suffer is the One who cannot forgive…

Because I learned to forgive the man who sexually abused me for years as a child, I have such a PROFOUND love and respect for my sexuality.  I am happy that I have forgiven my first and second love and the man I once nearly married for being unfaithful and lying to me about it.  I am so happy I have forgiven myself for believing for much too long that I am not worthy of incredible Love:  Self Love.

I am happy that I am pregnant with a Son 7 months in my belly because I now have begun redefining my relationship to the Divine Male.  I have had to do a lot of forgiving to men whom I have allowed into my Heart in my 32 years on Earth. I have a wonderful father and a stepfather who both love me and countless Elders who have been such powerful Divine Male Leaders in my life.  And yet as a teenager and as a young woman and now as a Mother, I have had few if any close Divine Male Friendships.  My authentic relationship with men is that they either want to be with me sexually or have nothing deep to do with me at all.  This makes it incredible difficult for me to have a gorgeous, Divine Male Partner, the father of my Rainbow Warrior Boy in my Belly, who has nearly all female friends.  My life has taught me that a man wants to have sex with me or be done with me.  To forgive that pain-causing belief system etched into my soul by past male friends and lovers and allow my beloved to be their authentic, beautiful SELF is such a guaranteed road to happiness:  one I am lovingly and diligently working on every single day.

And now:  And now I have the honor of experiencing an entirely NEW relationship with a Divine Male:  to be His Mother.  There will be a lot of forgiving needed in my future and this makes me very, very, abundantly HAPPY.

I know how to forgive.

It is scientifically proven that happiness makes the heart grow younger.  Wanna forgive?  Wanna be high? Wanna be Interconnected with me and everyone you love without needing to change a thing?

Here is a series of photographs I took of myself at 6.5 months pregnant and a series I had the honor of photographing of one of the most gorgeous sisters I know…

I am in love with Those whom we have learned to judge.  I am drawn to Those we are told to hate.  I am best friends with the Ones whom we call names in the shadows but smile to in daylight.  I am in love with the Ones you might be afraid to fully embrace.  I am engaged to Unconditional Love and the Ones whom we are taught to not love are my source of inspiration and are the medicine to my authentic path:  The town drunk of Yelapa, the Migrants crossing the Sonoran desert and the most divine Whore are fountains of inspiration for this soul that resides in my physical temple.  I have learned to love the man who sexually abused me for so many years because forgiveness tastes so much sweeter than suffering.  An incredibly sexy and outrageously talented transgender woman is currently my best friend and muse and life has never been more full for this heart and soul before you.  I am a disciple of those who live their lives in personal and judgement-free truth.  I bow to those who CHOOSE freedom from the box that our fragile society has created.  A society that I never agreed to agree with, but who I nevertheless respect and honor.  I embrace those who walk their talk, leading by example instead of falling pray to the overwhelming popularity of hypocrisy and judgement that plagues my beautiful brothers and sisters I see sleepwalking around me.

Borracho (drunk) Steve lived under the thatched side patio of Tino’s Restaurant and Bar on the Yelapa beach in the 80′s.  Everyone despised him and talked endlessly about his inabilities as a human being.  Borracho Steve was an ex-patriot from somewhere indeterminable in Los United States of Gringolandia.  He had a long matted beard the color of dirty laundry and his unkempt, unruly hair was a wild, oily mess around his wrinkled sunburned face.  His eyes were the color of the soft blue sky after the clouds parted from a summer rain and were filled with a tremendous desire to be loved.  He smelled of the ocean, tequila, Yelapa sand and piss.  He would ramble on and on about nothing much at all and was beautifully animated with his weathered hands.  When he saw me walking towards him on the beach, teeth would emerge in an excited half grin half lion-face from the hairy mask on his face.  Tears would gather in his eyes.  My own young heart would nearly burst every time I took his body of weary and love-starved bones in my small arms.  He would kneel in the sand and I would bury my blond head in his greasy hair and tell him that I loved him.  I loved Borracho Steve as a Mother loves her Son:  Unconditionally, no questions asked.  I knew he needed love and I loved giving him that love.  Borracho Steve died suddenly on the beach one humid and hot spring night; he was haphazardly and unceremoniously buried in the cemetery in the Pueblo.  I cried for weeks.

She first came to me as a massage client.  It wasn’t long before she became one of my closest friends.  She wanted to tell me for months but couldn’t get it out without crying.  In fact, I couldn’t even hear her the first time she confessed to me that she was a Whore.  I didn’t understand what she meant at first.  Did she like to sleep with a lot of men and felt badly about it?  Why was she so upset?  And with time I finally understood that she was a love worker,  the oldest profession on our sweet Earth.  She did not like to confess her profession to people, especially women, because inevitably she would be judged which would directly lead to feeling un-loved.  She was exhausted and deeply sad that she could not share with people who she was and what she truly loved to do.  I have never, ever ever ever met a woman who so beautifully honors the Divine Masculine AND the Divine Feminine.  I have never ever ever known a woman who can offer our brothers and sisters such unconditional and sensuous love.  Her trade is Medicine Work.   One of her clients is an 85 year old man who she fetches from the Suntran bus stop for his monthly Medicine.  She has taught me more about my sexuality and unconditional love than any other human on this planet.  She loves to be called a whore, she says.  She likes how the word rolls of her lips.  Now that she is completely comfortable with me, I get to hear stories from her work and we laugh, cry and I praise her for being a Healing Goddess for our sexually confused Men and Women.  She is my Sacred Teacher of Authentic Sexuality and I love her.

Why do we choose to use our words to judge and to make poison?  Why do we love to hate?  What if we practiced loving each other and our incredible differences?  What if I could be me and you could be you and we could honor our Authentic choices?  Why do we feel we must convert everyone to be just like us?  Why do we forget how to believe in and honor the magic of individuality?

Now that I am a few days shy of 5 months pregnant, I have re-discovered the magic in every little thing.  Just yesterday, I sat outside of a Circle K convenience store after working on a client and indulged in my first ever bag of Cheetos and drank a terribly sweet tea.  I was in bliss!  With every Cheeto that I put into my mouth, I would giggle in childish excitement while watching with deep affection the gorgeously strange people whom I would never talk to or ever know the names of stroll in and out of the Circle K.  The garbage scattered in front of the garbage can looked like an art instillation piece.  I marveled at the incredible weirdness and magic of the Circle K, a place I have never stopped to ponder.

And so to end this story, here are 2 different shoots I had the honor of photographing over the last few months.  Recently someone told me that I only photograph skinny women.  I was shocked!  I became defensive and wanted to show that person my client files and prove to her that I photograph all Divine Bodies, but I chose to not defend myself.  You see, I don’t see in terms of skinny and not- skinny.  I see only terms of One’s personal and authentic beauty.  I see You.  And I love seeing you.

It’s in west Africa where I feel the most beautiful.  There are barely any mirrors in the places I seem to stay and visit.  People do not react to my white skin and blond hair.  Men easily and vocally appreciate the body which my entire life has been called, “big boned”.  People cry when I leave and dance when I arrive.  I understand this kind of existence.

I am re-reading, for the dozen-th time, Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Fifth Agreement”.  Every time I read these simple words, I laugh and cry and wonder how the words have re-arranged themselves to form an entire new meaning for me.  I have never ever re-read something so many times.  Just like movies I watch- once i have read a book,  it’s an experience that I will more likely than not NOT re-visit.

This re-read’s time around of The Fifth Agreement I am most struck with his explanation on how this reality we collectively experience is perceived entirely different by every single Artist, that is, every single human.  The words that we agree to understand and communicate with hold tremendous difference in significance for each one of us.  The word perfect means something entirely different to me than to you.  The power of the word perfect has been programed and crammed into my mind in a completely unique way than it has been ingrained into your mind.

When we were children before learning how to speak and before we learned to associate words with what we were perceiving in our world, we just accepted everything we witnessed.  A tree was a tree without a word and without the definition of “ugly tree” or “beautiful tree”.  A tree was just PRESENCE and was just EXISTING.  We hadn’t learned the words to place judgement on the tree.  We simply witnessed the tree.

I want to return to that place.  And mostly, I have.  I place no judgement on anyone nor on the things around me.  Yet my 32 years of learned-ability to have terrible self-esteem still lingers in the shadows of my personality and existence.  Sometimes, though, it emerges from the shadows and dances like a terrible self-created monster in front of me in broad daylight!  The shame from having acne as a teenager presents it’s self every time i get a sprinkle of pimples.  When I look in the mirror I see a “big” girl and I inhale deeply, hold my breath and fantasize about being one of those naturally thin beauties.

But then I snap out of it and I scream, “WAIT A MINUTE!  Who the HELL is making up this story?  My pimples do not make me an ugly human, my luscious curves do not make me what our society calls fat.  I am just ME!!!!”  I realize that with the words I have leaned as a child and with the meanings I have agreed to give them through out my life,  I judge myself and I inflict SELF SUFFERING!!!!!!!!!!!!  AGHHHHH!!!

WHAT has HAPPENED to us, Sisters?!

I had a boyfriend many years ago break-up with me because i was “gaining too much weight”.  Ever since then I have been terrified of gaining weight and have accomplished some serious self-suffering.  I am so not alone in this battle.  Yet why, WHY, sisters, do we choose a BATTLE?!?!  WHY do we choose a BATTLE WITH OUR SWEET BEAUTIFUL SELVES?!?!?

I am putting down my sword and my chest armor.  I stand naked in front of you with my love handles and my cellulite and my pimples on my chin, and I care not which words you would like to place on me.  They are your words and I no longer agree with them.  I am perfect in this body that I have been given.

As I enter my 4th month of being pregnant, I am going to re-define the feeling of shame and “ugliness” that so often trails pregnant women.  I need no man to appreciate this beautiful body.  I love it to the last fucking drop.

I love this body.

Eva came to me from the Heavens.  I really do not know how she found me, but I am eternally grateful she did.  She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.  All she could see, however,  where the self-inflicted stories of suffering ie: NOT being beautiful.   Her mother told her she was ugly her whole life.  Her words have been messed with deeply with un-truths.  I couldn’t BELIEVE the beauty as I photographed her.  WHY DO WE SUFFER sisters?  We are so perfect, let’s see it NOW while we are still alive!  Let’s be our OWN lovers and our OWN biggest fans!  Let US LOVE our sweet, tender and authentic bodies!  Let us make the deepest love to OURSELVES!

This is why I love photography.  I see it as a medicinal tool to eliminate the un-truthful words we have agreed to place on ourselves.  It is a a tool of beauty.  I love photographing my sisters and killing the monsters of Self Suffering.  I love planting the seeds of Authentic Appreciation for Personal Beauty with No Judgement.  Only Love.

Original Music from my blood sister Singer & Song Writer Sapphire:

My yoga practice has gone out the door.  With it has gone rising early and eating mostly raw food.  I am 2 months pregnant, unmarried and just today I signed up for the first time in my life for AHCCCS (a state health-care for poor folk) and food stamps.

And yet…

And yet I work for myself.  I run my very own dance and photography studio.  I have clients who pay me well for massages even when they have tight pockets themselves.  I have a 15-foot blooming Jasmine bush in my apartment.

I may not make enough money to have my own health care, and yet I am constantly surrounded by radically juicy Love from my Tribe, from my family and community which, if not pregnant, is my health-care.

Standing and sitting in line today for over 4 hours for my “interview” for state health-care and food-stamps, I had no choice but to drop to my knees and give PRASIE to Great Spirit for facilitating such a Beautiful Life for me.  I was surrounded by hundreds of people with whom I normally have zero contact with.  The collection of people in the office instantly made me realize that even though I am a pretty Global Citizen, I basically live in a bubble surrounded by incredibly positive and abundant folks.  Just because I need help with bringing this baby into the world financially does not mean that I am in a desperate situation.  Just because I have little materially does not mean that I am not Abundant in my Spirit and outlook on LIFE.  On the contrary to feeling desperate, I am so grateful for the available help and I feel honored to receive financial support.  And good thing I went to apply today, because AHCCCS ends for people like me (single with no current children) July 1st.  My Birthday.

I am all about re-defining how I show up for all of this.  As I type this, I feel like I may puke at any moment.  My “morning sickness” lingers like an overweight and depressed relative clinging to my weary chest all day long.  I tell myself that I am fine, I am not dying, and after a puke or two, I move along with my day.  I massage my clients trying not to inhale because just about everything, even the scent of my own skin, makes me gag.  I don’t WANT to be sick!  I cannot AFORD to be sick so my mantra is:  surrender.  SURRENDER SURRENDER SURRENDER!!!  I pretend this intense feeling of nausea could very possibly feel orgasmic!  Maybe, just maybe, in some other dimension, nausea IS an orgasm!  Just maybe…  I am here to re-define it, folks.  It’s all I can do.

They tell me I will feel like Wonder Woman after 12 weeks of making this little human inside of my belly.

And soon…

I will return to my yoga practice.  I will make my kale salads again.  I will return to my comfort zone as an Authentic Being.

And I will be an amazing Mother.

Everywhere I go, even standing in line today for 4 hours for health care and food stamps, I see Beauty.

I have the honor of knowing Exquisitely and Authentically Beautiful Sisters and Brothers.  I have the blessing of having their trust and their desire to want to make art with me.  I have the innate desire to make magic with beauty-FULL people.  I want to show you what I see…  I really do.

Here is what I saw a few weeks ago…  Enjoy this Exquisite Magic Creation with my Yoga Goddess Rachel.  Music by my blood sister Sapphire Bell.