Arielle has a full life; she works full time, is a full time student, a full time mom of two boys who are the “best humans I could have ever imagined raising” and a full time wife to a deeply supportive husband.
Despite her extremely limited free time, Arielle made it a priority to come into the Allebach Photography studio (located just 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia in the town of North Wales) as a gift to her husband, with whom she’s celebrating 10 years of marriage to at the end of the month.
“I wanted to do something special for my husband because he has been a serious source of strength and support for me for the duration of our 12 years of being together and has stuck by me for the past three years of undoing a lot of trauma that was not his fault but had caused me to feel unsafe in my body,” Arielle shared with us.
When she was 19, Arielle’s husband helped her escape a dangerous living situation with another man and he quickly became her safe person.
“We quickly became friends and he helped to bring me out of a really desperate and sad place. Falling in love with him honestly was as natural as breathing,” she said.
Doing this solo boudoir session for him meant so much because beyond the surface, it was about showing him and herself how far she’d come to feeling safe in her own body and surroundings, and that so much of that was thanks to him.
“My husband and I have built a life that is not always perfect and not always easy, but definitely one that has given me the safety needed to heal from some pretty rough stuff in my past and to flourish as a wife, a mother, and a human in general,” she said.
Though some of our clients book months, if not years in advance, Arielle managed to quickly book a session just two weeks after her consultation call, as she didn’t have much time to dawdle as her anniversary was quickly approaching!
“I’m so glad that the timeline moved quickly because I didn’t have time to back out! I woke up at 6 am the morning of my session and was an absolute ball of nerves because doing a boudoir shoot felt so out of character and SO far out of my comfort zone!” she laughed.
Yet from the moment she walked up the stairs, she immediately knew that she had made a great choice.
“Erika greeted me so warmly and hyped up the outfits I brought along. Sarah, my stylist, was SO warm and kind and was the perfect person to help me shake off some of my remaining jitters. From the moment my hair and makeup was done and my first outfit was on, the nerves started to melt away, and then I was just filled with pure joy for the rest of the day. I could not stop laughing and smiling, and I have never felt more confident in my adult life.”
Arielle says she was surprised by how relaxed she felt during her session.
“I don’t know why I’d worked it up in my head to feel like it was not going to be as fun as it was. It honestly was like hanging out with a friend, even though I’d never met Mike or Erika before. It was just such a fun day!”
For Arielle, her session tapped into something internal she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She continued, “Before my session, I was NOT comfortable in my own body. As the session went on, I could feel myself returning into being present in my body – again, for the first time in a really long time. I was surprised by how easy it was for me to just sink in and embrace my femininity and sexuality and I feel like it really showed up in the final products.”
When she saw her photos, she was in shock.
“Immediately I had to swallow down tears because I just couldn’t believe that was ME. I had never, ever seen myself in the way that Erika and Mike captured me. But in the pictures, I could actually see for the first time why my husband probably thinks I’m a total smoke show…because I could see that I’m a total smoke show. I cried about the feeling on the drive home and still am feeling just overwhelmed with the emotions of how the day of my session unleashed a newfound love for myself.”
As Arielle designed her album, she acknowledged that the real gift might be what the session did for herself.
“I can’t emphasize enough what a healing experience this has been for me to reclaim my body and to see myself as a sensual and beautiful human. I feel like it brought me to a place where I can truly embrace who I am and what is great about me and has given me a serious bad bitch confidence in the best of ways.”
Ready to schedule your own Boudoir Session with Allebach Photography? Give the studio a call at 610.539.6920 or visit http://allebachphotography.com/contact/.