I learned how to forgive on a dry, windy and pleasantly warm afternoon in Taos, New Mexico.

I had recently turned 24 and I was preparing for my first trip to Guinea, West Africa. My heart seemed to be carrying equal amounts of joy and anxiety while my skin had broken out in an unexplainable rash of enormous sores on the upper part of my neck and onto my lower jaw. I felt terribly ugly. I knew it was useless suffering to feel ugly. I mean, I was massively blessed: My community in Taos had helped me raise the funds I needed to get to Guinea and to study at the dance school that I had been dreaming of for nearly a decade. I was going to go study dance for 5 weeks with Youssouf Koumbassa! I lived in a beautiful hand-built adobe home with my best friend on the Taos Mesa. I had a job and a dance class to teach and people who loved me. And there I was, wasting time feeling ugly…

She had come to me. There is a generosity of love that others seek out to give to me that seems to be a pattern in my life: Respectable and powerful people come to me with their hands open wanting to gift me love and support within their expertise. M. Rose had told me I should come see her for a Shamanic healing session in regards to the sores on my neck and jaw. I told her I would love to, and it’s just not something I could budget in right then. M. Rose said she would love massage from me in exchange for her profound healing sessions. I cried and said I didn’t feel worthy to massage such an incredible woman…

And so it was that I learned how to forgive.

I walked into her tranquil healing room and sat on the large futon couch with it’s big soft pillows and a box of kleenex placed at the far end . I was nervous. Scared, even. What should I say? What should I do? She looked me in the eyes and I started to cry. She laid me on her table, placed her warm, wisdom-filled hands on me and my long-held ugliness suddenly became crystal clear.

I had been living with useless suffering for over 17 years. I had been waiting to be validated and held and told that I had been wronged. I had been feeling ugly for so long…

From when I was 8 years old until I was 11, I was sexually mis-handled and mis-treated by a man that was incredibly kind. My sweet child self didn’t understand how I could deeply love, hate and be terrified of the very same person from the marrow of my youthful bones. He had taught me how to be a champion cribbage player and got up early to make me incredibly thoughtful and tasty breakfasts, wheezing away in his kitchen with his emphysema. You see, I had to stay at his house often because my mom and step-dad were away in Puerto Vallarta on the weekends a lot. They were usually playing at one of their numerous musical gigs to make ends meet. My cribbage coach did very disturbing things to me. Noone ever knew… I held that terror which was also mixed with love along with that unwanted ugly feeling in the molecules of my skin for almost 20 years. He died when I was 14 and I cried for hours. I wanted to be held by someone and be told that he was a bad person and that my suffering was good.

M. Rose told me I could hold my tender-sweet-self and validate all the emotions I had about the man who had caused me feelings of ugliness. She said I could practice forgiveness towards him and no longer be a victim. ”You have the incredible power to un-victimize yourself and set yourself free from the suffering you have carried with you for so long”.

And so I did. While I was at it, I thought, I might as well forgive Ismael for forcing himself on me sexually when I was 14 when I had said no. I forgave my first lover for not believing I was a virgin and I forgave myself for feeling ugly for far too many years.

Today, I can think of all of this without feeling charged, free from victimization and with tremendous amounts of forgiveness. I feel so utterly beautiful. I feel proud of the immense strength I have cultivated ever since I was a child of 8 years old. I can think of Ed and Ismael with compassion and I know there were doing their best. This forgiveness I practice every day feels so good…

While discussing with the author the wide spectrum of people’s view on life and religion in “The Art of Happiness” the Dalai Lama said, “Sometimes I am so flexible {on understanding everyone’s point of view} that I am accused of having no consistant policy.”

I embody this wisdom from His Holiness.

Because I can forgive and because I innately know that all of us, yes ALL OF US are doing our best, I find it incredibly easy to be flexible and see reason in what everyone thinks they must do.

We are a vast rainbow of color, this Human Race that we fragilely, vulnerably and exquisitely are. We have the power of belief and the power of forgiveness. We have the power to live this life in joy and so I chose joy. I chose to feel authentically and irreplaceably beautiful.

Feeling beautiful feels so much juicier than feeling ugly! It takes much less energy too…

And this is why I love photographing Women. I know what it feels like to feel ugly when all One wants is to feel Beautiful. Because I now have the medicine of Forgiveness, I can see through the story of ugliness and see the authentic truth of Beauty.

Everywhere I look, I see Beauty.

Today, I was playing with new studio lights my dear friend Sean Stuchen is allowing me to use. I had no intention of posting these images. I was simply playing with the light and these images were nothing more than tests. However, after having composed this memory of words a few days ago and wanting to post images with it, I could not think of a more appropriate series of photographs than these of freedom-self.