call me and talk to me nice so i don’t crash out this sunday 🫶🏽🥹 +1-614-528-4014. lau’s marathon hotline is open through this sun, oct 12!
+ 5 more daysssss until @chimarathon 🥳
#laurunschicago #running #marathontraining #chicagomarathon #blackgirlsrun #explorepage✨ #firsttimemarathoner
i’m just a girl lying about running being fun 😌
+ 20 more days until @chimarathon !
#laurunschicago #running #chicagomarathon #marathontraining #blackgirlsrun #explorepage✨
HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT THIS WEEKEND FOR TEST SHOOT— OUR POP-UP STUDIO SHOOT! 💓📸
myself, @chinezexo , and @dana_belle are getting together on SUNDAY MARCH 23 FROM 5-7 PM to make some beautiful images of and for you this sunday during our POP-UP STUDIO SHOOT ✨
hosted under the culture and arts community group @openhouseinitiative_ (a personal project, need, and community initiative i’ve been dreaming of for some time now + will share more on later), TEST SHOOT is a quarterly open studio practice that is part creative collaboration and part offering to the city. featuring photographers based in Columbus, TEST SHOOT offers high-quality, low-risk portrait mini sessions boasting tasteful sets and the imaginative perspectives of the featured visual artists.
any questions? shoot over a DM. we hope to see you there this weekend! 💞
friends! 💫
me and some talented photographers (who also happen to be friends) are participating in a pop-up open photo studio THIS SUNDAY, MARCH 23 FROM 5-7PM!
the weather has been great, the sun is sunnin’, and we’re feeling creative so we present to you TEST SHOOT.
hosted under the culture and arts community group @openhouseinitiative_ (a personal project, need, and community initiative i’ve been dreaming of for some time now + will share more on later), TEST SHOOT is a quarterly open studio practice that is part creative collaboration and part offering to the city. featuring photographers based in Columbus, TEST SHOOT offers high-quality, low-risk portrait mini sessions boasting tasteful sets and the imaginative perspectives of the featured visual artists.
and this March, i’m honored to share the space with @chinezexo and @dana_belle for Women’s Month ✨
if you need a new headshot for the LinkedIn life, you’re keen to convince your camera-shy grandmother to come take portraits that will last a lifetime, or you just want to dress and be cute because you know you’re itttt— book a slot + let us hype you :)
more details and event link in the you know where! 💓
y’all tryna pop out and show 🥷s? 👀
————————
photo credit (in order of appearance from the fliers):
• @lautodd_
• @chinezexo
• @dana_belle
#photography #openhouseinitiative #forthegeneralpublic
Just putting this here to let any women reading this know when @lautodd_ and @chinezexo collaborate on anything it’s going to be full of gems that you’ll chew on for years to come. Still thinking of this Story Telling Event and how it blessed me. We had some rich dialogue in a room full of amazing women and ended with taking portraits. Cheers to being outside in places that align with your journey. That’s a wellness nugget for us all in 2025. I love y’all, stay healthy 🌱
an aside to where I was before—
—
the other day, a friend text me an old photo of myself, herself, and another friend. i’ll spare you the many jokes i made about how that photo is surely and undoubtedly found as a satisfactory definition for “jump-scared” in Oxford Dictionary (i mean… my God, my great and majestic, perfect and holy, matchless joy 😭😩😮💨 lol).
but, what was so jolting to me was that i didn’t realize how much i had changed from then to now. my entire countenance has shifted— not just because my hair was shorter or because i’m 4 years older than in the photograph. but, the woman whose eyes i saw in my bathroom mirror yesterday looked nothing like the ones i stared at in the photo.
i knew, by way of journey, history, and memory, where i had come from in ways that could not be seen by any named and naked eye— the ways of my heart, mind, spirit. i didn’t consider how my body, my face, and whatever expressions they beheld took on the ways of my life that were once heartbreakingly empty, angry, and unidentified.
i was shocked to see how far from myself i knew i was internally, but was confronting and discovering how far i was physically, too.
there’s a book called “the body keeps the score”— brilliant and challenging, if you’ve the time and humility to read it. it essentially details, in the most watered down of summaries, how our experiences—good, traumatic, and in-between— live in our bodies. that your body acts as a monument to the wars and wins you’ve traversed. your shoulders can become a resting place for laughter-turned-choking, from grief, or a place where supernatural joy has staked its banner.
that old photo vs. me, now, reminds me of this. i never considered that my experiences also lived on my body as much as they lived in.
i’m by no means in conclusion of who i am and shall be, but i am in awe of the work of redemption. losing words, daily, at the work of resurrection. moved to testify of the complete work of meeting a Man who told me everything i ever did.
—
ps. i ain’t got a house yet ☝🏽pero i’m speaking into my future 🤾🏽♀️
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#explorepage #selfportrait #blackwriters #blackwomenhealing #savedbygrace #growth
“You are worthy of everything it cost(s) me to come close”
—
tears, conviction, and meditation have struck me unexpectedly these last few months over the reality of Mary of Bethany— a woman that purchased a gift for Jesus with resources, monies, and pensions garnered from her life before Him. Mary, a woman once married toward many manners of obscurity—both chosen and forced. Mary, a woman who anointed the feet of Christ with what the things of old ways had afforded her.
not just the good parts or parts of her self that she likes best; or those she can present most respectably enough to make sense to others, but also the parts and pieces that she would’ve rather remained
unexposed;
unseen;
unheard of.
for anyone accustomed to living at a distance for fear that their weaknesses, inadequacies, and stumblings could drive (or have already driven) away the possibility to be loved as you are known, this sounds like a foolish and willful doxxing.
yet, the beauty, safety, and revelation of pure intimacy called her by name and spoke of the worth of One who didn’t consider her history reason enough to keep His distance.
and so, she arrived before Him unafraid of all that He would see from what she had available to give. He had already made known to her He was choosing to love her, as her, in spite of all the time she had spent being every one-and-thing but her.
she gave Him the whole history of her self, and He called her His. He called her loved, entirely. in spite of. just the same.
and what greater love is there than this one that lives like this? than one that is worthy of what it costs to practice nearness? than this one that the expense of allowing your whole history the opportunity to be loved cannot discourage?
—
“…a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table.”
Matthew 26:7 NKJV
