While I started out by popping to my room to take a few snaps to mark this one year in time, it resu

While I started out by popping to my room to take a few snaps to mark this one year in time, it resulted in a photoshoot that lasted a couple of hours. It was good. In a way I inspired myself (as much as that word makes me cringe).

It began with me hating every photo. I realized I was trying to over-pose. That is, pose how I instructed countless beginner models to pose over the 12 years I was an {intensely busy} professional photographer and worked with so many women who had never modelled before (or modelled very little). That’s when I realized: my body is disabled. It isn’t a normal body and the techniques I taught to (often very young), fit, toned, even muscular models would just not work for this disabled body. It does not bend the same (or over bends in the wrong places), the skin drapes in ‘ugly’ ways, I am covered in wrinkles and stretchmarks, my intestines sag out due to lax abdominal muscles, my limb tissue spreads out in 'ugly’ ways for the same reasons, I am too skinny in some areas, and 'flabby’ in others.

The negative inner voice started wondering loudly if it’s even possible to tone a body with muscle, nervous system and organ failure. It told me how awful the photos were looking; how they were all photos I wouldn’t even show models of themselves were I solely behind the camera again. And that’s when I realized: what do I 'preach’ every single day on Twitter? That disabled bodies are real and numerous, that they deserve the same love and respect as any other bodies (maybe even more) and that disabled bodies are attached to people. And so I embraced it.

I changed things up. I changed my underwear, I removed my clothes. I scrunched myself up and twisted myself about, moved the camera around and took photos of this disabled body and saw the person spilling out from the wrinkly seams. I am this person. (Look at those cheeky little toes (; ).

{please don’t remove my words}