Water Ghosts

On Reflection, Remembrance and Becoming

Yesterday, I stepped in front of a camera for the first time in a while. These days I’m mostly behind the lens snapping action shots of sporting events and school milestones.

Something was different about this shoot. I was different. The way I showed up was not the way I used to.

Not because a brand needed a body to sell something.
Not because rent was due.
Not because my worth was tangled up in measurements, casting calls, or someone else’s approval.

This was something entirely different.

The photos were for a magazine feature.

The Innovators Issue.

A phrase that still feels strange rolling around in my mouth.

Innovator.

For most of my life, I was recognized for what I looked like.

Yesterday, I was being recognized for what I’ve built.

For the women we’ve helped publish.

For the stories we’ve helped bring into the world.

For the foundation.

For the mission.

For the years spent turning pain into purpose and purpose into action.

For the life that exists beyond my reflection.

The photoshoot took place at my cottage.

My happy place.

The place where I feel most like myself.

The water was relatively calm. The air carried that familiar scent of pine, earth, and early summer. The kind of morning that feels like medicine.

My photographer is a dream.

She doesn’t photograph people.

She sees them.

There is a difference.

Some photographers capture an image.

Others capture essence.

She has a way of looking through the layers. Through performance. Through perfection. Through the masks we don’t even realize we’re wearing.

So naturally, the masks started screaming.

As soon as I stepped in front of the lens, old voices began introducing themselves.

Do I look fat?

Should I have waited a few more weeks?

Maybe I should have gone on a diet first.

My skin looks old.

My makeup sucks.

Can we smooth that?

Can we filter that?

Can we hide that?

Funny.

You can spend years healing and still find old wounds waiting patiently in the mind to jump out and say “boo” like a ghost.

Not because healing didn’t work.

Because healing isn’t erasure.

The little girl who learned her value through appearance doesn’t simply disappear because the grown woman now knows better.

The fourteen-year-old who was scouted for being thin and told to lose weight.

The fifteen year old told to surgically modify her body to be better.

The seventeen-year-old whose body became public property.

The model who learned that being chosen was currency.

The woman who spent decades under the microscope.

They’re all still in there.

Not driving the bus anymore.

But occasionally popping up from the backseat.

Yesterday, they came along for the ride.

And for a moment, I listened.

I scrutinized.

I zoomed.

I analyzed.

I looked for evidence that I wasn’t enough.

Evidence that age was winning.

Evidence that my body had failed me.

Evidence that I should have prepared more.

Controlled more.

Shrunk more.

Performed more.

Then something unexpected happened.

I looked around.

I was standing in water.

The same water that has held my tears.

The same water where I’ve had breakthroughs.

The same water where I’ve dreamed up businesses, books, movements, and futures.

The same water where my children swim.

The same water that asks nothing of me except presence.

The lake did not care about cellulite.

The trees did not care about wrinkles.

The sun did not care about my jawline.

Nature has never once demanded perfection before granting belonging.

Only humans do that.

And mostly women.

Women who inherited impossible standards and then mistook them for truth.

Women who learned to evaluate themselves before entering a room.

Women who became mirrors for a culture obsessed with youth, beauty, and performance.

Women who learned to look at themselves through someone else’s eyes.

I know this because I was one of them.

Maybe parts of me still are.

The difference now is that I notice.

I hear the voice.

And then I decide whether or not to believe it.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about healing.

Healing isn’t the absence of old thoughts.

It’s the refusal to hand them authority.

The thoughts still arrive.

The invitation still comes.

You just stop accepting every RSVP.

Yesterday wasn’t about proving that I’ve transcended body image wounds.

It was about witnessing them.

Compassionately.

Honestly.

Without letting them run the show.

Because the truth is, the photographs weren’t documenting what I look like.

They were documenting who I have become.

A woman who survived.

A woman who built.

A woman who mothered.

A woman who published hundreds of stories.

A woman who turned her wounds into wisdom.

A woman who no longer needs her reflection to determine her value.

And perhaps that is the greatest irony of all.

After decades of being photographed for my appearance, the images that matter most are arriving now.

When the story has finally become more interesting than the face.

When the voice has become louder than the ghosts.

When the woman has become larger than the mirror.

The old wounds showed up yesterday.

But so did she.

The woman who knows that wrinkles are evidence of laughter and grief and living.

The woman who knows that softness is not failure.

The woman who knows that a body is not an ornament.

The woman who knows that worth was never hiding twenty pounds away.

The woman who knows that being seen and being judged are not the same thing.

The woman who finally understands that the mirror was never the authority.

She was.