making_art
Member
Cultivating Self Love through Self Portraiture
Vivienne McMaster
July 9, 2014
Welcome to the Be Your Own Beloved Website! I’m so glad you are here! I’m Vivienne and I’d love to share a bit of my story with you and what you’ll find in this space.I teach online classes and in-person workshops that help you use self-portraiture as a tool to see yourself with self-compassion. Yes, even selfies!
While I love spilling stories into blog posts, I often feel like I am most at home telling stories in photos, so why don’t I start by telling you a bit about how I discovered photography and how it was a catalyst for healing for me.
I often read stories of how folks discovered photography at very young age and never looked back. That isn’t my story. Not because it wasn’t available to me, but because I tried on all sorts of other creative adventures before getting to photography. Yet none of them (theatre, songwriting, performing music, sewing, pottery, knitting and on and on) felt quite right. They didn’t feel like a fit. But I had this perception that photography wasn’t just picking up a camera and shooting and was intimidated by all of the information I thought I needed to know to take a photo. It turns out I was wrong.So if you decide to join me in an E-Course, know that I come from a place of playfulness, of experimenting, of discovery. In fact, one of my favourite mantra’s in my classes is: Playfullness is an Antidote to Fear!
When I started falling in love with photography and realized how accessible it was (oh how digital photography had perfect timing blossoming around this time) my love grew quickly.
As you saw in the video, I discovered photography around the time that I was emerging from a rough patch (aka a depression) and a major part of this journey was turning the camera on myself. I knew I was no longer the same woman, but I had no clue who this ‘new me’ was. I felt like a blank canvas with no clue how to start the journey to figure out how to paint her image again.
My new love for photography was the perfect tool. It allowed me to just start in the moment. With a simple shot of my feet that made me feel like even if I didn’t know all the answers, in this moment I was taking a photo that just let me feel like ‘I am here’. So it began.
What I didn’t know, was that not only was taking self-portraits going to help me find my way back to myself, but the effects would go much deeper and help me heal my deeply negative self-image and self-hatred, something I had been in a major struggle with since my early teens. Taking self-portraits slowly but surely helped me shift away from the negative way I saw myself and make room for new stories of self-kindness. It didn’t happen overnight, but surprisingly quickly I started to realize that I didn’t need live the way I had been for over a decade, in a place of near constant self-hate. In fact it could be the opposite. I could learn to live in a place of self-compassion, with my camera as my guide.
I quickly realized this wasn’t something available just for me. In fact anyone could pick up a camera and use it as a tool to shift their relationship to themselves & the way they saw themselves in photos. Not only that, but I realized that it was a missing piece in a lot of the personal growth & self-love work out there. So I started teaching about self-portraiture to women around the world in 2011.
Since 2013, my mission has become even more focused on helping people see themselves with kindness through their cameras and I am so honoured to be able to share this work through my blog and through Be Your Own Beloved! ...............
Vivienne McMaster
July 9, 2014
Welcome to the Be Your Own Beloved Website! I’m so glad you are here! I’m Vivienne and I’d love to share a bit of my story with you and what you’ll find in this space.I teach online classes and in-person workshops that help you use self-portraiture as a tool to see yourself with self-compassion. Yes, even selfies!
While I love spilling stories into blog posts, I often feel like I am most at home telling stories in photos, so why don’t I start by telling you a bit about how I discovered photography and how it was a catalyst for healing for me.
I often read stories of how folks discovered photography at very young age and never looked back. That isn’t my story. Not because it wasn’t available to me, but because I tried on all sorts of other creative adventures before getting to photography. Yet none of them (theatre, songwriting, performing music, sewing, pottery, knitting and on and on) felt quite right. They didn’t feel like a fit. But I had this perception that photography wasn’t just picking up a camera and shooting and was intimidated by all of the information I thought I needed to know to take a photo. It turns out I was wrong.So if you decide to join me in an E-Course, know that I come from a place of playfulness, of experimenting, of discovery. In fact, one of my favourite mantra’s in my classes is: Playfullness is an Antidote to Fear!
When I started falling in love with photography and realized how accessible it was (oh how digital photography had perfect timing blossoming around this time) my love grew quickly.
As you saw in the video, I discovered photography around the time that I was emerging from a rough patch (aka a depression) and a major part of this journey was turning the camera on myself. I knew I was no longer the same woman, but I had no clue who this ‘new me’ was. I felt like a blank canvas with no clue how to start the journey to figure out how to paint her image again.
My new love for photography was the perfect tool. It allowed me to just start in the moment. With a simple shot of my feet that made me feel like even if I didn’t know all the answers, in this moment I was taking a photo that just let me feel like ‘I am here’. So it began.
What I didn’t know, was that not only was taking self-portraits going to help me find my way back to myself, but the effects would go much deeper and help me heal my deeply negative self-image and self-hatred, something I had been in a major struggle with since my early teens. Taking self-portraits slowly but surely helped me shift away from the negative way I saw myself and make room for new stories of self-kindness. It didn’t happen overnight, but surprisingly quickly I started to realize that I didn’t need live the way I had been for over a decade, in a place of near constant self-hate. In fact it could be the opposite. I could learn to live in a place of self-compassion, with my camera as my guide.
I quickly realized this wasn’t something available just for me. In fact anyone could pick up a camera and use it as a tool to shift their relationship to themselves & the way they saw themselves in photos. Not only that, but I realized that it was a missing piece in a lot of the personal growth & self-love work out there. So I started teaching about self-portraiture to women around the world in 2011.
Since 2013, my mission has become even more focused on helping people see themselves with kindness through their cameras and I am so honoured to be able to share this work through my blog and through Be Your Own Beloved! ...............
