Give thanks to the body that carries you through the world...

We all have different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Your body has carried you through thick and thin, through trials and tribulations. It deserves kindness. A boudoir session can allow you to step into a space of gratitude, celebrating the journey you have been on, what it taught you, and where it brought you. A lens rooted in gratitude can help you use your boudoir photos as a way to give thanks for your freckles, your scars, your curves. Sometimes the step from insecurity to confidence is about acknowledgment and respect.

It is a shame that we sometimes focus on what our bodies aren’t, rather than all the amazing things they are. The boudoir session can softly and kindly remind you that your value isn’t tied to your appearance, but to everything that makes you who you are. In that spirit, this thank you letter is to writing what boudoir is to photography - a message of love and appreciation, of gratitude for the body you are in right now.

Dear Body, 

Thank you for being my home. Thank you for being the vehicle through which I move through life. You allow me wondrous experiences. I can feel the sun on my face. I can give and receive hugs. I can smile. I can enjoy delicious food. I can cry. I can get goosebumps. I can take up space. Thank you for connecting me to the world and to other people. You are constantly adapting and evolving. You let me love others. 

Thank you for expressing my emotions and allowing me to feel joy. You have grown and nurtured me through every interaction and exploration. Thank you for telling my story. My scars show that I have healed. Every mark is a mending, a place where my body has knit itself back together. It has endured. It has recovered. My heart has been broken, and you kept it beating. 

I come to this moment with my body rejoicing in everything it can do and accepting with love everything it cannot do. I celebrate everything it has the potential to accomplish, and everything it is in this current moment. I promise to nurture it, to embrace the roundness, the softness, the flaws, the imperfections. I come to it in acknowledgement and apology, in gratitude and celebration, and I make a promise to myself that I will treat it with kindness, harmony, and love. 

Love, 

Me

Writing a letter like this, along with a boudoir session, is a way to give thanks for what you bring to the table. What you focus on expands. Pay attention to the little things, and life’s abundance begins to reveal itself. 

Your session will unabashedly let your light shine. It can fuel your vision for the future. It can help you see the genuine value within yourself and move forward with strength, hope, power, and belief in the worth of your body, giving you gratitude for the new light in which you see yourself. 

Your body, as it is, should be honored. It works hard and needs gentleness. You are your own body standard. This is what it is to be alive, to be human. Hard things happen, and our bodies are with us through it. As with any important thing, we must give it the care and maintenance it needs. Invite compassion and recognize the value inherent in your physical being. 

The body talks. Treating it with profound gratitude, grateful for what it has allowed you to bear, what it has withstood, and how it moves through the world, is not naive. When your ruminations are of thanksgiving, you change the story. Our lives can be difficult, traumatic, and painful. Our bodies can feel all those things deeply. But that is never the whole story. When we pay attention to our body, rather than attempting to silence it, we are showing our appreciation. Our bodies deserve our compassion and our voice. 

Let your body be bold. 

Let your beauty be bright. 

All the best love is thanksgiving.