I posed nude at 22, as a while in active addiction to i.v. drug user. The photographer had hoped for a sexy young woman to show to that Victorian on Waller street. He had paid me before noticing my tracks. "What's with those, what are those scratches?" He asked. My flaws exposed, I admitted that when I left I'd buy my next fix.
I eventually decided I was tired. My flaws growing to heavy to bare. I listened to the harm reduction advocates & gave up the needle. Nudity I was still comfortable with. My choices to use ecstasy often produced photographic evidence of flawed choices...
I finally left drugs behind two months into my pregnancy of my oldest child. Flaws or not he was growing inside my body, and was born of my nakedness. He is perfect, and he is flawed. As He has grown he has impressed upon me the importance of never hiding my flaws. I am as honest about my past as I can be for his age. He asks a question, I provide the best answer I can even when it's uncomfortable. "Yes, I used drugs while you were growing in my tummy. I made a really bad choice. You have difficulties because of this, but you just have to adapt.
Because the truth is, we all must live with the flaws we are given, and all we can do is accept them while finding the way we have to live with them. We can live in the light, and our flaws sometimes will be in the shadows. Other times they will be clearly visable as an expression on our face. I am grateful for the opportunity to display my flaws at a year shy of 40. I have a photographic persona full of filters. This is my first opportunity to unapologetically say, " your stigma isn't mine and your judgment is flawed." I am posing nude to demonstrate I am my flaws.