“A love story between me, a camera, and over 400 women defining themselves”

Back in 2015, I fell in love. Not with a person, I was already head over heels for my husband (he’s cool with it) but with a machine: a Nikon DSLR. (Sorry, Canon folks. We can still be friends, but we’ll never share lenses.)

My husband was the one who taught me how to use it, but here’s where it gets full-circle poetic: he learned from a friend of mine—someone I met through activism in Ferguson. So in a way, it was protest and purpose that introduced me to photography. The lens became my new language, and I never really put it down…. until life sort of forced my hand.

Protest taught me a lot. And unlearning? That was a full-time job. But the biggest truth that grabbed me by the collar and never let go? WOMEN – specifically Black women – were the true backbone of the Ferguson uprising. They organized. They strategized. They rallied and regrouped and revived whole communities, all while doing the rest of life’s emotional labor behind the scenes and without a complaint (because of course they did).

Let’s just call it what it is: women take the most shit. Period.

We’re the ones trying to raise decent humans if we have children, keep the bills paid, manage the spreadsheets and the meal planning, and still somehow find time to show up for the world. And despite that superhuman balancing act, women are the first to be dismissed, overlooked, underpaid, and burned out.

Now multiply that by ten for Black women and women of color.

In Ferguson, I saw it up close: Black women leading the charge, pouring every last drop of energy into their communities, only to get sidelined, questioned, and hit with twice the bullshit for half the recognition and resources. If white women are running the emotional labor marathon barefoot, Black women are doing it with weights on their ankles – and still finishing first. That’s not poetic, it’s the reality. And it changed me.

That spirit and that grit? It’s what I carried with me behind the camera.

From 2015 to 2018, I traveled with my beloved Nikon to four cities: St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, and some little town in Illinois halfway between here and Chicago (you know, the kind of place with one gas station, no Starbucks, and absolutely no cell signal). I spent those years photographing over 425 women and girls as part of The Awakenings Project STL – a body-positive, word-powered, soul-baring journey of defining ourselves. Each participant picked a word that meant something. Resilient. Unapologetic. Enough. Loud. Soft. Whole. Complete. We used our bodies as canvas and the lens as mirror.

It was messy and beautiful and exhausting and franticly electric. My camera and I became accomplices in witnessing women wake themselves up.

And then…. life happened. Somewhere between COVID, cancer, and a never-ending pile of shit that makes you say “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I stopped picking it up. I miss it more than I expected. There’s something about looking through that viewfinder that made the world feel a little more in focus – at least for a minute.

This is a chapter of my life I rarely talk about. Not because it wasn’t important – because it was too important really. It shaped how I see the world around me. It cracked me open in the best possible way. Honestly? It impacted me more than battling autoimmune issues or even cancer. The camera wasn’t just a hobby to me. That hunk of plastic and glass and gears gave me a voice and a purpose, and a way to show the truth when words weren’t enough.

I have no clue whatsoever what could be next for me and my beloved Nikon. Maybe we just needed a break. Or maybe the next chapter is waiting right around the corner to be captured. Who knows? But once the physical healing is done, maybe it will even help me make sense of **looks around and waves** all this.