I've been thinking a lot lately about the voice in our heads...
The one that narrates our lives.
The one that decides whether we looked silly when we said that thing. Whether someone likes us. Whether we’re doing enough. Whether we’re a good mother. A good friend. A good partner.
Whether we’re beautiful.
It’s funny when you think about it.
We can spend so much of our lives worrying about what other people think of us, when really, we can never actually know.
We see a look on someone’s face and give it meaning.
We notice a change in someone’s tone and create a story around it.
We walk away from a conversation and replay our own words.
Why did I say that?
They probably think I’m…
I should have…
I wish I was more…
And suddenly we are living inside a version of ourselves that we created on somebody else’s behalf.
But perhaps they never thought any of those things at all.
Maybe the person judging us most harshly was us.
And that got me thinking about photography.
Because I get to experience something quite strange from behind my camera.
I get to see people without being them.
I see the way a mother instinctively reaches for her child. The little crinkles beside her eyes when she laughs. The softness in her face when she looks down at the baby she grew.
I see strength and tenderness and humour and exhaustion and beauty all existing together.
I see her.
And then sometimes, I show her the photograph.
And she sees something completely different.
Her stomach.
Her arms.
The way her dress is sitting.
A line on her face.
Something about her hair.
Some tiny detail that I hadn’t even noticed.
And I always find that fascinating.
Because I was there too.
I looked at the exact same woman.
And I didn’t see any of it.
I wonder how many photographs we have almost deleted because we didn’t like ourselves in them.
How many times we have stood behind the camera instead.
How many swims we didn’t take because we didn’t want to wear bathers.
How many clothes we didn’t wear.
How many invitations we nearly declined.
How many moments we were physically present for, but mentally somewhere else, wondering how we looked while we were living them.
And I wonder—
how much does the way we see ourselves narrow the life we allow ourselves to have?
Because this goes far beyond photographs.
If the voice we live with every day tells us that we are awkward, unattractive, too much, not enough, behind everyone else, failing, ageing badly, doing motherhood wrong…
What does that slowly take from us?
What do we stop offering the world?
What parts of ourselves do we make smaller?
And what might happen if we became a little kinder to the person we spend our whole life with?
Not in a grand, love every part of yourself every second of every day kind of way.
I’m not sure that’s realistic.
Just in a gentler way.
A relationship with ourselves.
One where we notice when our own mind is telling a story and remember that it isn’t necessarily the truth.
One where we speak to ourselves the way we would speak to someone we love.
Especially, perhaps, the way we speak to our children.
Because I look at my children and I want so badly for them to know their worth.
I want them to take up space.
To swim.
To laugh loudly.
To wear the thing.
To be in the photograph.
To try and fail and try again without deciding that failure says something about who they are.
I want them to move through the world without constantly looking at themselves from the outside.
And then I realise—
they are watching me do it first.
Maybe motherhood isn’t only about teaching our children how to see themselves.
Maybe it asks us to reconsider how we see ourselves, too.
Because one day our children will look through photographs of us and they won’t see the things we picked apart.
They won’t care about the wrinkle.
Or the soft stomach.
Or the way our arm looked.
They’ll see Mum.
They’ll see the way we held them.
They’ll see our ridiculous laugh.
They’ll see the house they grew up in and the clothes we used to wear and how tiny their hand looked inside ours.
They’ll see their childhood.
And they’ll see us in it.
Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts photography has given me.
The chance to see people from the outside.
And to realise just how different that view can be from the one we have of ourselves.
Through my lens, I have photographed women who tell me they aren’t photogenic.
Mothers who apologise for their bodies.
Women who warn me about the parts of themselves they don’t like before I’ve even lifted my camera.
And then I photograph them with the people who love them.
And I see none of those things.
I see a whole person.
A story.
A life being lived.
Perhaps life really is, at least partly, what we put into it.
The meaning we give things.
The stories we tell ourselves.
The way we choose to see what is already there.
And maybe creating a beautiful life isn’t always about changing the life in front of us.
Maybe sometimes it is about changing the eyes we are looking through.
So be in the photograph.
Wear the bathers.
Say the thing.
Laugh with your whole face.
Let your children remember you as you actually were—not the smaller version of yourself you thought the world wanted.
And every now and then, when you catch your reflection or see yourself in a photograph and that familiar voice begins picking you apart…
I hope you can borrow my eyes for a moment.
Because I promise you,
I wasn’t looking at your arms.
I was looking at you.
