Sense of Self

Sense of Self is a five-year exploration of my personal journey through EMDR therapy and the body’s ability to hold, process, and release trauma. The work looks at how memory, especially when it’s fragmented or repressed, continues to live within us, showing up in the body through tension, sensation, and instinct.

For some, grief and sadness can live in the throat, anger in the legs or upper back. The gut often carries sadness, and fear can write itself into the lines of a forehead, or sits quietly in the pit of the stomach. In EMDR, bilateral stimulation, often experienced as left-to-right eye movement, helps the brain reprocess and release. I wanted the photographs in this series to reflect that same sensation: soft, blurred moments that mimic the side-to-side rhythm of the eyes; portraits that feel slightly out of focus and fleeting, like fragments of a memory you can almost grasp but cannot fully recall.

What began as a practice of trying to visualize all my body has carried has grown into a celebration of peace. No matter where you are in your journey, the things we hold in our bodies can be brought into the light. My hope is that these images offer an invitation for you to pause, stay with the breath and continue the sacred work of coming home to yourself.