Now – here’s the thing. It is not easy being a single Mum – as SO many of you will know.
It certainly is not easy being a single Mum whilst also running a business….on your own.
It is really PROPERLY not easy knowing that EVERYTHING is down to you – from paying the rent, to dealing with teenage angst, to unblocking the sink.
Yet – here we are! Me and Paula!! Two of the worlds ‘cope-ers’.
We’ve both had more than our fair share of disasters and drama. Yet whatever life’s chucked at us – we’ve coped. Somehow we’ve managed to build successful businesses and , more importantly, raise two beautifully adorable fully-fledged men (of whom we are both insanely proud) and send them out in to the big wide world.
On our own!
Two veritable Goddesses!
How confident are we ……..not!
And this is the trouble with girls. It doesn’t matter WHAT we do. Or what we achieve.
It doesn’t matter what our families think of us. Or our friends. It doesn’t even matter how much our children love us.
We look in the mirror and judge ourselves by the numbers on our birth certificates and the numbers on our bathroom scales.
Are me and Paula any different? Nope. She’s already been on the phone this morning. She just wants to ‘check’ the photos from Friday night before I make them public. I know EXACTLY what she’s up to. She’s doing what we all do….. looking for fat arms, double chins and big bellies…. and then she’ll ask me to delete them!!
Because Paula may well have been a client for 18 years but I have never photographed HER. I have done commercial work for her at the salon – including a whole series of ‘Ten Years Younger’ images. I have photographed her son. I have photographed her dogs (more than once!).
But Paula herself? Or Paula and her son? Or Paula and the dogs even?!
Never.
This beautiful, talented, hard-working, kind, generous and warm-hearted Goddess of the Universe ‘hates herself in photographs’
Just like the rest of you!!!
I did wonder if Friday night would be different. I would be working exclusively with clients of a beauty salon!!! Surely these ladies would be up for being in a photograph?
Guess what? Every single Goddess on Friday night had to be dragged – kicking and screaming – into a photograph. Even Mums there with their daughters had to be frog-marched in front of the camera to be photographed together.
Girls – one day those daughters (and sons) will look for photographs of you.
PLEASE make sure they have something to find.
Annie x
PS Images from Secrets Secret Party are all on the website. They are an 18th Birthday pressie from me and Paula so just download and share and tag them at will! Don’t look at your fat arms, big bellies and crows feet and delete them. Look at your fat arms and remember how many hugs they’ve given. Look at your big bellies and remember the babies that grew in them (and all those meals and bottles of wine shared with friends!!)
And look at those crows feet and know they are only there because you laughed and smiled about it!!
DOWNLOAD & SHARE YOUR IMAGES HERE
