Strike a pose! Its all about the hands!

We (Husband and I) were very, very pleased to have a voucher as one of our retirement gifts for a photo shoot with  an incredibly talented and award winning photographer in our area - Martyn Norsworthy. I know Martyn really well and he's photographed me before, both for business and personally.  

He knows I'm never pleased with how I look, despite all appearances to the contrary and I'm very low on self esteem and personal body image. 

It didn't help that unusually for us, husband and I had a quite blistering row the night before. Well I say row; I shouted and himself listened! You know how it goes don't you! :) 

Anyway, the whole shoot was brilliant and a very sneak peek re-assured me that the photos would look ok. 

Well, they were more than ok, and we were incredibly pleased, however, there were the usual comments from me - can you make my teeth whiter, can you crop it a bit so you can't see how big chested I am, etc etc. But then came a bit of a game changer for my thinking. 
It went a bit like this:-  

Me - Ummm Martyn I really like this one (the one above) but are you able to do anything about my hands? 
Martyn - Your hands?? (clearly puzzled) 
Husband - Your hands?? (even more puzzled) 
Me - Yea, my hands! They're old looking and 'veiny'! 
Martyn & Husband look at each other and then look at me
Martyn - Your hands are beautiful, just like you. Think of what those hands have achieved since you were born
Cue tears................

Cue more tears in the car, more tears in our home and even more tears when I walked the dogs on my own later that day........ Why tears? Because whether you like it or not and however you frame it retirement IS a sign of getting older, unless of course you're financially able to leave your working life at a reasonably young age. So the photo shoot and the 'hand' incident have been a significant cut off point for me in coming to terms with my ageing process. 

An ageing process that has seen some dear friends not reach this point. A process through the years of not looking in the mirror unless I could help it, yo-yo dieting from starving to purging, consistently looking for affirmation that my body/myself is good enough. 

Now I'm not saying that automatically I'm over that thought process and subsequent actions just because of a photo, but it's very much helped me to reframe my thoughts on ageing and how I look. 

Thank you Martyn, and thank you Husband for putting up with my insecurities! 

Liz x

https://www.norsworthyphotography.com

P.S Still not sure about my hands! 😀😀😀