The Artist Reborn: Creating from Legacy and Freedom
This is the third letter in my “Through the Lens” series — written for the photographer in the quiet middle, where mastery meets doubt. you can read the first letters in the series below:
“There is no forward, and no backward.
Linear thinking, that is the illusion.
There is only one here.
And here is perfect”.
There’s a version of me who no longer needs to prove she’s an artist. She just is.
Unraveling the constructs of expectations and liberation to create
Freedom is remembering that creation was never meant to prove anything.
Returning to the Body
Growing up I was a studio dancer, and now I am 29 years old. In the past six months I have started to dance again. I’m taking classes each week and performing and a huge lesson I have learned is the liberation in the act of surrendering. It’s just me and my body — remembering.
Surrendering to self-made expectations and societal timelines.
I’ve learned that liberation begins when we stop performing — for others, for our own perfectionism — and start surrendering.
When I move now, I move for myself. There’s no timeline. No comparison.
And somewhere along the way I remembered:
This freedom I feel in dance is what’s been unfolding in my art.
Now that I am free to dance on my own, to have my own autonomy (no one telling me what I should and shouldn’t do) I have been able to let go of my own expectations and put in the work. Stop believing I should be following any sort of timelines…
Creative Rebirth
Last year, I began writing. Quietly.
Not as a new “project,” but as devotion. A small daily practice.
I never thought of myself as a writer — which is funny, because I’ve always been writing.
But photography led me here.
The stillness between sessions, the quiet seasons, the aching questions they gave me room to write. And writing gave me room to breathe.
It’s strange how the moments we resist — the lulls, the waiting, the uncertainty — are often portals. If I hadn’t slowed down in my photography career, I would’ve never found this new language for my creativity.
Now, I see how photography and writing aren’t separate expressions.
They’re mirrors of the same truth:
Art is what happens when you let go of what it’s supposed to be.
If it wasn’t for those quiet invitations when things were hard, and quiet, and learning to let go of those expectations I had as a photographer – I wouldn't have made time to write. Which is extremely cathartic for me. It’s a spiritual experience, and it’s allowed me to get really creative and find ways to combine my passion for photography with writing.
This liminal space I sit in, is a quiet revelation, a rebirth of all that I am. Allowing me to expand my creative endeavors into places I still don’t know I'll go.
There’s something liberating and exciting about not having all the answers, and having the privilege to sit in the quiet. To forgo everything you thought you should do with your career, your business, and sit in stillness.
Stillness is not failure. It is transformation. It is growth.
Ripples, I like to call them. No longer performing to be seen, but showing up for self.
It’s time to lay down the burden of your own expectations, and be held by the quiet loving presence of self.
Unlearning the Rules
Motherhood keeps reshaping my outlook on life, again and again. All versions of myself as another have served some future self.
Motherhood challenges me to soften, when I think I should stay hard. To hold, and then release.
To remember that the most sacred art form I’ll ever create isn’t a photograph, it's the life I’m living inside of all of this.
We’re taught so many invisible rules about success, aren’t we?
That we must be visible to be valuable.
That marketing must look like showing up online every day.
That rest means we’re falling behind.
But these are constructs — not truths.
It’s possible to run a business without social media.
It’s possible to thrive quietly, to plant seeds in secret, and still grow a beautiful garden.
Belief is everything.
If you believe that the only way to be successful is to stay online, that becomes your truth.
But if you believe that your art can reach who it’s meant to reach — in divine timing — that becomes your truth too.
Courage is the bridge between the two.
When I deleted social media, I wrote in my journal:
“Instead of viewing this new direction as failure, it’s emergence.
I’m dissolving the veil that kept me from my potential.”
And it’s true. The quiet has been my greatest teacher.
Allowing your creativity to breathe
“This isn’t reprogramming, this is remembering that it isn’t so serious and my life's work is an accumulation of everything I'm doing. I must always remember who I am and who I came here to be. My life is not a replication of someone else's desires.
“We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.
The real work of the artist
is a way of being in the world.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
If you find yourself in a season of stillness — unsure of what’s next, but sensing something within you stirring this is your invitation to trust it. Following those inkling nudges and feelings.
Creation doesn’t always look like growth. Sometimes it looks like rest. Sometimes it looks like sitting in the quiet, until what’s meant for you finds its way back home.
This piece is part of my ongoing exploration of creative freedom, identity, and legacy.
