Before I tell you how being deaf influences how I run my business, let me tell you more about it. I was identified as hard of hearing really early on in my life. My brother and I are the only two people in my whole family that have hearing loss. It was that 1 in 1,000 chance for us each.. and we both hit jackpot. I have was fortunate enough to go through speech therapy and learn how to lip read. To this day I use a cochlear implant. The cochlear improves my hearing to a level that hearing aids never would’ve gotten me to. So y’all I do have a hearing aid that allows me to communicate to you and you may not even know I’m deaf. Despite that, I am still deaf so there are times I will ask you to repeat yourself, or if I ever ignore you its NEVER intentional.. I just didn’t hear you.

This disability is something I am open to sharing, but refrain from blurting out right away. It’s absolutely not something I am ashamed of, but I hold it back sometimes because I get judged. People can form a opinion about me before they even meet me. When I opened up to my followers over the summer last year and I was shocked by the love I received. keeping it a “secret”  at the time seemed harmless. I thought maybe clients thought I really couldn’t hear them or couldn’t communicate well. I get where they’re coming from because they are all legit concerns!  But when I was hiding, I felt like a fraud. I wasn’t my true 100% self to the people that trust me with their most precious images, and y’all deserve to know who you’re hiring!

 I purposely wanted to start sharing my story more often in hopes of encouraging and inspiring people. The biggest thing I’ve constantly told myself and others is that “It doesn’t define you”. What ever it may be. I mentioned before I didn’t want people to judge me before they met me. So, I have been constantly been trying to turn the tables proving it’s not a limit to my abilities. I don’t know why I keep trying to prove something to a bunch of strangers… yet I do it everyday.

I genuinely want to know what your story is. What makes your soul happy. What gets you excited to wake up in the morning. I wanted people to hear me out and listen to my story (accidental pun there (; ). Now, I don’t want to just spend an hour taking pictures then high five and leave. I want to give you my world class bear hugs, hear your story, grab a smoothie in the middle of a session, and explore together.

Being deaf has influenced me to run my business by being a human being.