LeeAnn K Photography
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with LeeAnn of LeeAnn K Photography after winning a personal branding photoshoot through GrlPwrProjects last year. I cannot say enough about LeeAnn! Not only did she help me break out of my natural instincts to become a rigid statue while posing for photos, but she also took the most beautiful photos that perfectly reflected both my own personality and the mission of my business.
Now, I have the privilege of being featured in her blog! Check out part of the interview where I talk about why I stopped attending events for trauma survivors:
LeeAnn: At the end of the day, what impact do you want to have on the world as a business & person?
I want to start a new conversation about trauma. I am going to be very honest with you - I stopped going to events for sexual assault survivors a long time ago. And for a while, I felt guilty about it. How could I claim to be all for empowering people who have experienced trauma when I don’t go to events for trauma survivors?
The first time I attended an event for survivors, I felt incredibly empowered. I shared my story out loud and was immediately supported by a group of people who, in their own way, understood exactly how I was feeling.
Simply having a supportive space to tell my story out loud was powerful. But as I continued to attend these events, the experience turned from empowering to depressing.
I was sharing the same stories over and over again and I no longer felt powerful doing so.
Instead, I felt stuck - stuck in the past and stuck in my old stories. “What’s next?” I thought.
I wanted to talk about more than just my memories of abuse.
I wanted to talk about how to work through my fear of intimacy so that I could hold someone’s hand.
I wanted to talk about how to work through triggers so that I could touch my own body in the shower.
I wanted to talk about how to stop looking for safety in other people and insead, discover it within myself.
I wanted to talk about my life outside of the abuse.
I wanted to laugh and be lighthearted. And I needed a new conversation to do that.
I share a lot in my books and in the work that I do. Like a lot a lot - I share my journey with learning to masturbate and experience pleasure again after trauma. That's a lot!
LeeAnn K Photography
Some may call this oversharing but I think it’s necessary. For a long time, I thought that I was the only person struggling to hold someone’s hand or to touch myself in the shower or find safety within myself. I thought I was the only one because no one ever talked about any of these topics.
No one ever talked about these topics, not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know how.
The reason we only talked about our abuse stories during events was because no one is teaching us how to have other types of conversations about trauma.
So, my mission in creating my book and my business is to share as much as I possibly can so that anyone who has experienced trauma and is struggling with the same things can know that they are not alone in any of their experiences.
My mission is to start this new conversation and for this new type of conversation about trauma to become the norm.I want every single person who has ever experienced trauma to feel comfortable sharing their stories and asking questions so that they can truly grow, heal and live beyond those experiences.
Check out the rest of the interview here!
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