Hey Everyone!
wowza, what a crazy year it's been thus far! It's brought upon so many changes in my life that I couldn't have even imagined a couple years ago. From getting to know Soren, to 5 months of backpacking around Asia, to getting my yoga teacher certification in India, to teaching yoga every Thursday in Toronto, to completely re-branding my website - it's truly been a year of change and courage.
Change... a word many of us are scared of: It brings out a sense of vulnerability; it drops us right inside the world of the unknown; it brings us to a state of un-ease, as if we're hopping on a pogo stick, unable to stand still. Yep - change is scary, but it is also extremely rewarding.
Have you ever thought about doing something you were scared of doing, but KNEW that if you DID IT, it could change you? That was me - about a year ago. I decided to listen to that voice of intuition and start the journey back to myself. After travelling for 5 months and doing a month long intensive yoga teacher training, I came home feeling refreshed, more mindful and more in-tune with who I am. Luckily, Soren was supportive of my solo journey (although it challenged both of us at times... maybe it did a lot... but we both learned and grew from it).
I came home, looked at my website and cringed at it. I wanted it to reflect more of my personality and the personality of everyone and everything I wanted to photograph. With lots of brainstorming and help from those around me, I came up with Northern Wildflower. The term wildflower became synonymous to "our true self" and it was a term that resonated with me a lot while travelling solo. I liked it so much that I was in contact with a minimalist tattoo artist in Thailand, deciding what kind of wildflowers to put on my forearm. After quite a few exchanges and lots of patience on his part, I couldn't settle on any of the designs so I never ended up getting one (just didn't feel right, yet). When Soren found out I wanted a tattoo of wildflowers, he panicked a bit (tattoos are for life after all) and asked why wildflowers? So I wrote him a pretty detailed email:
“I am a wildflower.
We are all wildflowers.
Wildflowers get overlooked. You don’t see the beauty in them until you take the time to REALLY look at them. That’s how people are sometimes. We are conditioned by society to judge quickly based on appearance and don’t take the time to really get to know someone.
The definition of a wild flower is: a flower growing freely without human intervention. I LOVE that! Growing freely without human intervention. I want to grow freely as a person - free from societal pressures, free of my ego, free of the past and the worries of the future, free of my debilitating thoughts... This is exactly what yoga is - it is the journey and the end of reducing Avidya so that the veil of truth can surface and our true nature shines through. We are all wildflowers - not cultivated roses that are unflawed.
Picking wildflowers in the summertime is also a form of meditation for me - when I take time out of my day to really look at the beautiful world around us, making me more in-tune with myself and the world around me.
we are also constantly changing, whether we like it or not, and what I love about wildflowers is that they adapt to their environment as best they can. They are strong and do whatever it takes to survive. They symbolize an adaptive nature that we all have. Like us, wildflowers go with where the wind takes them; adapting accordingly.
In essence, I wanted my tattoo to encompass many things in my life that are important - freedom, truthfulness, yoga, the breath, and I just couldn’t think of anything better then wildflowers. Reminding me to be ME, in whatever situation, staying true to myself.
Hopefully this makes sense. I am still trying to gather my thoughts to explain it all in a coherent way. ”
There it is - that's me - a wildflower from the north wanting to photograph other northern wildflowers.
I am so excited to focus my intention on capturing only the truest forms of who you are. Whether its who you two are as a couple , who you are as a family, who you are in your business ect... I love the natural shots, of you doing what you love, of you interacting with eachother or the enivironment. Just pretend I am not there! (okay, I know that is a hard one) - but you get it, right?
Stay tuned for more photo sessions and travel blogs!
Thanks for reading, Namaste <3