Dear beautiful soul soon to give birth – the power of maternity boudoir

Dear beautiful soul soon to give birth -

If you are like me, you’ve spent months watching the body you’ve known your whole life transform into an entirely different form. You’ve had thousands of words and images and videos and people telling you how you should be, how you should feel, how you should be living as a carrier of life. From the moment you conceived and for the next several years, your body is no longer your own. It is nourishment, safety, and home for another little life. So when I tell you that you, more than any other human, deeply deserve to take this time for yourself - to feel safe, nourished, and celebrated - please, believe me.

If you are like me, you are about to spend many days - if not all your days - noticing the ways that your body has forever changed from carrying this child. Taking this moment to write your own story, allow yourself to be witnessed with grace, and to create art out of your life giving vessel will change how you see yourself in ways that will last a lifetime. Even on your hardest days, when your eyes are drawn to the lines that weren’t there before - you’ll remember the lines in the sand or the silk that wrapped you up and made you feel radiant, strong, brilliant, and bursting with love.

When you feel depleted and exhausted and forget what life was before it was us, you will look back at these photos and remember you. Your power. Your radiance. Your birthright as a goddamn deity deserving of adoring documentation. Yes, it’s money. Yes, it’s time. Yes, it’s energy. And you probably don’t feel like you have any to give right now. But let me tell you, as someone on the other side - you’re about to spend a hundred times more than this on a thousand little things that your baby needs from you, while sacrificing and forgoing even your own basic needs, for likely years.

Now is your moment. Now is your time to be selfish. Don’t let anyone else - but especially yourself - convince you it’s not worth it, because it’s the most worthwhile thing you can do for yourself in a season that is about to be, importantly, not about you for a very long time.

Molly is here to help facilitate a situation that will allow this to be possible for you, I’m sure of it. So even if you feel exhausted. Even if you feel swollen beyond belief. Even if you look in the mirror and no longer recognize the face staring back at you. Even if that “glow” everyone told you to look forward to is nowhere to be found. Even if you’re like me, and practically every moment of this pregnancy has been hell - let this be the one beautiful moment you weave into your heart and mind forever.

Let it be the evidence that you not only survived, but that you thrived on this day in your own way, as you were captured like the masterpiece you are, just as you are. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen, you just show up. Molly and her team take care of the rest.

Yes, elaborate outfits and beauty treatments and whatever else can be fun to extend your day of cosplaying as a demigod if that feels good to you - but you can also be like me and show up “au natural” in the skin you’re in and you’ll still look divine. So please, carrier of life - allow yourself to be held, cared for, seen, supported, and shown love like I did.

Give yourself a moment of the love you’re about to pour selflessly into this new being. Molly is a master artist and you are a moving muse. Even if you don’t see it, I assure you, she will. And you will not only look back and see yourself through her gracious eyes - you will remember what you felt like. And that’s a gift worth more than anything else right now. You deserve it. You can do it. Just book the damn shoot.

xo Emily

Interested in your own maternity boudoir session? Start your journey here.