Messy, magic motherhood 🤍 In the fall, I signed up for @nataliegildersleeve Intuitive Artist for the first part of 2025 (even if I did it kicking and screaming). The thing is.... not a single bit of me felt like an artist, so it felt really foreign to sign up for a course like this. But. I wanted to feel like my work was beautiful again. I wanted to stop all of the outside noise and find my voice instead. I wanted to feel alive, to feel inspired, to feel free. Even if all of those things felt so impossible. Towards the end of the three months, I noticed that I stopped caring how others perceived my work because for the first time in a really long time it actually felt beautiful to me. It felt good. Not perfect. That’s not the goal I’ve learned. But it felt like coming home in a lot of ways. And I think maybe that was the point? Every exercise, every reflection, every emotion-filled journal page brought me to a place where I began to feel inspired again and found the freedom to create. It all amounted to something, and for that, I’m immensely grateful. Natalie is truly one in a million, and if you have the chance to attend a workshop of hers, mentor with her, or take the leap and join this course, you must do it. These are just a few images from my personal project during the course. These were fully documentary sessions with moms in very different stages of life and motherhood and are each experiencing (and battling) different things personally. These images are not perfect, but they are honest and real, messy and magic both- just like motherhood. Happy Mother’s Day, mamas.