healing gracie

This was just something I was thinking about last night before going to bed. It has to do with how my own personal experiences have influenced my photography. I mentioned this very briefly in my last post about how what we experience in life (the good and the bad) can also serve as inspiration.

I look at my life experiences...the abuse I experienced and that I am still healing from, and it has had a large impact on my photography. Although what I experienced was horrible, and I often wonder what good can come from it. How could anything good and beautiful come from something so painful and terrifying...something so dark? How could I move on from it? How could I use how it impacted me to create something worthwhile...something amazing? How could I use it to help others?

When I do photography, I do it as much for others as I do myself. What I realize now is if I hadn't been through the abuse, I probably wouldn't have had the desire to capture images to help uplift others. To help aid in the healing of others. I'm not saying I am glad about what happened to me...I wish I never had to go through something so horrible...but I can see that with the right effort I can direct the energy towards something good.

So in a way, my abusive past is one of my main sources of inspiration. It may not fully inspire eveything about a picture I take, but it does give me the motivation and a reason for going out into the world to capture these images. It also inspires me to share them. For when I share my artwork, I am sharing a part of myself.