Growing Your Self Worth
/
Uncovering your self-worth is not like picking a beautiful flower and proclaiming, “oh this is my beauty!”. Naw, that is too easy.
Read More
Learning To Love The Alabama Land
/
Landing back in my hometown in Alabama after 15 years has been a hard transition for me. I was friendless, depressed, very sick, and living by myself. I was thrown into what felt like the twilight zone- facing the ghosts of my past and those deeply rooted religious beliefs head on. I was scared I wouldn’t stand in my truth. I was scared I wouldn’t find friends.
Read MoreFollow My Health Journey On Caring Bridge
/
Follow Meghan’s Health Journey Through Caring Bridge
Read MoreYou Can Go To Therapy And Still Love Jesus
/
ll of this is to say it’s ok to seek help, even if you don’t think you need it. It’s ok and healthy to not carry your load alone. It’s healthy to look deeper into yourself. If you are depressed and anxious there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, and Gods grace is boundless.
You can love Jesus (or not) and also go to a non-Christian therapist. If you Don’t feel supported to seek help in your life, I’m here and will cheer you on as you do.
If you ARE in a healthy therapeutic relationship, I would love to hear about your experience and what modality you use. Your experience Could be helpful for all of us.
Gently Laying Down My Camera
/
While at the hospital, I met a handsome nurse and gave him my business card.
As soon as our interaction ended, I remembered an e mail from squarespace telling me my site expired. My ego got triggered, and I gave it my all (after spine surgery!) and $144 to immediately renew my photo site. Damn it, I am a really good photographer and I am really proud of my work and my business..and he needs to know that.
Truth is, my business hasn’t made money in a year and a half. My ego couldn’t let go of what was already gone.I’ve tried hard to pivot as my body could tolerate.. but my eyes cannot look into the sunlight.
I have known for 6 months that taking photos is no longer an option for my body. I’ve cried a lot, but I want to give my body the ability to stay healthy long term. No longer pushing her too hard.
I do not have a beautiful website to show cute nurse how HARD the last two years have been. I was too tired to tell him about how I’ve dedicated my life to learning about EDS, while fighting a faulty medical system the majority of my life, in unrelenting pain. How standing in that very spot was a miracle and an answer to all my prayers..having undergone a life saving spinal fusion surgery WITH insurance.
In my short life, I have pivoted careers (I just counted) 11 times to accommodate my body. I’ve loved watching you guys pivot, seeing your creativity. A little jealous That I feel I’m straight out of pivots.
Here’s what I do know. I believe my next career will come in smoothly, and I’ll love it more than photography. It will be more creative and it will be healing for myself and so many others. Everything I’ve learned will be morphed into a way to serve and heal.
I still feel a bit of shame in how my ego responded to my photo site, but I really love looking at the pictures i take, so maybe it’s a surgery gift.
Im changing my fight or flight survival response when it comes to..just about everything.. and am allowing my new pivot to come in at its own beautiful pace as I step into what is in the highest alignment for myself. This is a great privaledge to have while I heal.
If you want to see my work, and the website that is still up and running, if you want to immerse yourself in family and love and light and beautiful imagery, go to www.meghillphoto.com . I will be happy to have you visit.
Women of July
/To know these women is a great honor. An even grater honor is to have them in my life and photograph them as they are to me. Such strong, resilient and loving souls.
Artist Manifesto 2020 Naked Marketing
/
Meghan’s Artist Manifesto and Manifestation
I am an artist. I am created to create. I use my gift of creativity and connection to take photographs of what is often unseen to the naked eye : Love, Connection, Pain, Tenderness ,Resiliency and beauty. Telling the stories of those beautiful unseen threads of connection that exist between people’s hearts.
My artist eye will capture the unseen in invisible illness with my camera and the photographs and time together will serve as a means of advocacy, a healing balm to each other, and will be a reminder of resilience within the EDS community. I am a storyteller, and I will be vulnerable , and brave with my story to create a space of intimacy and trust with others like me.
I use my depth of understanding, my empathic and nurturing spirit and my ability to plan and connect to build an online community and educational resource for the ehlers-danlos community. This will create a web of connections and will allow creativity, healing, new ideas, new friendships and new pathways of healing for the connective tissue community. Since I thrive when I am leading, I will lead this community and will create a yearly event of learning, dancing, healing, spirituality and art..etc. I believe the frequency of the flow of art can heal, and I believe that each of us have a healing and artistic gift.
My creativity will heal my body and soul and it will help everyone I come in contact with on their healing journey. My creativity will provide new and reliable pathways for patient care and management of pain in the ehlers-danlos body, for the collective. My photography will bring new awareness and understanding in a beautifully creative way for the marginalized and the resilience of the human body and spirit.
My art and the building of this teaching platform and community will provide a steady life-long career for myself with infinite possibilities of growth, grant and sponsorship. My strength and creative genius will be seen by photojournalists, journalists, storytellers, art critics, doctors, producers, editors and writers, educators, trauma victims and therapists, children and adults with chronic pain, healers across the world, and most importantly others who have been alone in their journey with ehlers-danlos syndrome. My life journey is a collective experience and will be seen and turned into a movie/show by the Wachowski sisters. I will use my leadership platform to encourage, adcovate, educate, nurture, provide safe space, heal, inspire, connect and my light will activate others to awaken to their divine nature. (which EDS is actually angelic DNA..most have this)
When I get discouraged, scared, overwhelmed or off balance I will take a deep breath and center myself and remember why I take photographs and create art and share my healing path : to connect with others, to bring healing to the world and to express myself artistically WHILE also showing others what I see inside of them…living my life as an example of what we are capable of as human. My life serves as a connective mirror.
Making art as a career HAS AND WILL provide a stable and reliable income for me until I retire. My artistic expression has no limits, and will be sought after more and more as my story becomes known and seen by a wider audience. I will always have the best insurance. My camera and my healing search are my pathways to see the world and experience different cultures. I will have time and energy to care for my body, to make delicious food for myself and my family, I will have a flexible schedule and will not have to EVER over-extend myself physically. I will never burn out because I know how to create a healthy flow of creative and life balance.
I am brave enough to chart my own career path, to teach my own way, to advocate and learn about my body in ways that have never been done before. I am brave enough to have a career shrouded in unknown and mystery and I trust I will always get the work I can handle.
I share my abundance with friends and family. I have a small house by the ocean and a small house in the mountains and a vacation home I share with my family. I travel in my van to speak, teach, shoot, commune with healers and mother gaia and connect to other EDSers.
My photography and platform will allow me to collaborate with other talented artists both within the EDS community and outside.My photographs will change lives and will create a space for isolated people to feel seen and know that they are never alone in their experience (even if they ARE lonely). I will be invited into homes across the world and will witness and learn and document how others love and live meaningful lives with life-long disabilities that are always changing.
My artistic career will flow as smoothly as honey and will be an extension of my life and will bring fulfillment and purpose to my existence on earth. I will leave a lasting legacy with my art and the creative expression of my fully-embodied life.
Thirty Three Mantra
/
I’m standing on the penuchle of the softest moss-covered cliff, looking down into the depths of the unknown sea below. The sea beacons me with the familiar clash of her dark waters. Her sweet voice draws me down
Mystery feels unsettling for me, because the known is familiar and solid. I have a desire to understand, a desire for the structure and stability that comes from knowing the clear path into the future.
I am having a hard time writing and its making me anxious and nervous. I don’t know why. Sometimes words flow out, but sometimes they feel stuck in my throat.. unable to utter them outloud. So my intention for this weekend trip into the woods is to set intentions for the following year of my life, because.. you know.. I just turned 33. and it kind of feels like a big deal in the course of my life because the past 33 years have been bonkers. It feels like re-setting, like I am putting down the luggage from the long journey behind me and settling into the path ahead. I have clear vision of what I want that to entail, the photos and the feelings are vivid colors and voices inside of my heart and at this point I am unable to adequately articulate that into proper language.
The year ahead feels like a cozy fire and a walk down a mossed forest path scattered with wildflowers. It feels like sunshine on my skin and it sounds like laughter ringing in my ears. It is a slow dance in the rain, and a tingling on my lips after true loves kiss. The book will no longer be missing chapters, putting the missing links of storylines together in one beautiful rainbow. Inspiration will flow freely from the center of my soul into the soles of my feet and out of the tips of my fingers creating beauty wherever I set my gaze. Friendships will bloom into flowering trees, and my life will have deep purpose that roots me deeper into my own gifts and service to the world. I will knock and seek in the darkest nights, allowing my emotions to unlock truths and love from the depths of my heart. I will bathe in forgiveness like a warm bath, and will open my heart wide to the doors of opportunity that will appear before me. The year is a gift to build a solid foundation I can call my own, to slowly step into the leadership and creativity life is calling from me. Laughter, spontaneity and a child-like sense of wonder will light the path along the garden I am growing in this season of life. I will rise up like a phoenix, knowing my strength and harnessing my creativity to build a lasting career foundation for myself. The year ahead lies blank, and the mystery is hard to accept. I would like to know the plan and have something to drive me forward with purpose and clarity.
But the truth is, I do not know what lies in the year ahead. I would love to heal fully, but I know this takes time and is a sacred process. Will I get the surgeries I need? I will start shooting families again, and will have purpose in my weeks and days building something I can carry with me into the future. I will travel in the van, get to know the amazing people and state of alabama.. allowing things to inspire me with my camera and trust that I will be given the friends and healers and guides I need along the way. I will be given the gift of friendships and will host parties and make girl friends and collaborate with amazing artists in alabama and the south. I will fall in love, and will practice divine patience in unconditional love. I will follow my heart and trust that I will be given every opportunity I have been asked to receive to heal and learn.
A Story of a Young Super Girl
/
“She doesn’t know how special she is”, I heard her say as I started to doze off to sleep. “She thinks all little girls have the special powers she has, which might be a good thing.. we don’t want her to become isolated because of her uniqueness. I wish I knew how to give her the strength of the love she gives us and everyone she meets.” Her voice trailed off into the distance as I entered the world of my dreams.. except for me, my dreams actually open a door into another world. Don’t all children have the ability to jump in and out of worlds like me?
When the sun is up, and in my day-to-day life, I love to create images I see from my dreams. Images of rainbows and friends with brightly colored hair, endless gardens filled with laughter and flowers. I like to draw my unicorn, and all the images of light that fill up my heart. I give these drawings to my friends to help take away some of their pain and fear of this world. It always feels like I don’t belong here, I often feel different than my friends. When I see someone who is crying or hurt, I can feel their pain in my own body.. my own little heart holds the weight of their crushed dreams. My super power is that I can take away their pain and give them hope and beauty. It hurts me too much to see others hurting, so I take away their sadness and at night I give it back to the water in my dreams.. and it makes rainbows.
Sometimes, though, when I see someone hurting it feels so dark inside of me, and I am afraid of the dark. I feel like the darkness comes into my own heart, and I don’t know what to do with it. It seems like the more I travel to distant beautiful lands in my dreams, the more pain I can hold. In my dreams, there are trails of light that follow me, light lighting up all of these energy centers of my body giving me just what I need to bring more beauty into the world. I can see through people’s eyes and know what is going on in their heart. When it’s too heavy, I write it on a piece of paper and take it down to my “wailing wall” my caregivers gave me. They didn’t know how to help me calm my sadness, so we build a wall at the back of the house. This wall is made of stones, and when someone’s pain is too much for me to hold, I take it to the wall and give it to God to carry. I understand that I can't carry it all on my own , and I need the help of the force of love that created me. If I am going to be able to give the world my superpower, I have to fill myself up with all the rainbows and light to keep my powers strong. I don’t have anyone to talk to about these things, because no one I have met understands. I hope one day to find friends who will help me with this power, and maybe they have super powers too? Maybe one day we can all work together to make this world a much lighter and more beautiful place. Because I have so much light inside of my heart, I can shine a light in the darkness and I am never lost.
The Great Reset
/
What is being asked of you in this season of life is to slow down and turn inward, everything falling apart for your greatest fears and survival instincts to resurface and show you where healing must take place for transformation to happen. Oddly enough, I have hope for the first time in a really long time because of all I learned and walked through during the past year and a half living in survival mode without much hope of a better future. When we are faced with these traumas, we may have shame in how we respond when old patterns of coping and survival come up to be worked through. I’m still working on releasing coping mechanisms I developed to survive through the fire of this past year. Did you know I punched a hole in my wall last year AND I punched a hole in the microwave of my van? Both times when I had been in a deep deep state of pain, loss of insurance, no relief from the intensity of the pain.. and both when I was about to jump off a balcony (or cliff). I say this to say that the human spirit is wired for survival, and is SO FUCKING STRONG. There is no wrong way to survive, you are going to do the best you can taking things one day at a time. Please be compassionate with yourself, and tell shame and guilt to leave your mind when they arrive. You will find your power and your own personal strength during this season as you face uncertainty, isolation and fear.
We are all facing this global shift together, and I know that if you are here NOW then you are a very very special soul. There is no right way to walk through this, but I have seen the healing that takes place when everything falls apart, there isn’t much hope on the horizon and you are forced inward to love yourself and look at the dark corners of your being. This is not an easy path to take, but would you have chosen this if it wasn’t forced upon you? Pain will take you there, it is our greatest teacher. You are being asked to sit with your emotions and face the unknown with trust and faith, and this is a conscious effort that you may face a hundred times a day. I find that the most profound creativity rises in the face of adversity, and I see a shift in how you will move forward in creating your life.. from that deep place inside your heart as you sit with your own vision for the future. Fire burns a forest down only to have new life spring up healthier than before, and I see the creativity and community that will arise in us all as we are asked to rebuild new healthier systems for our society and our children’s world. You are being asked, again and again to choose love over fear, and as you practice this you will get better and better at it. You will adapt. I see the power of our collective humanity, I see unconditional love rising in our hearts as we embody Christ Consciousness, and I see artists and writers and leaders and advocates stepping into their strength and rebuilding a brighter future for us all. We are builders, we are planting seeds for a new harvest.
I believe in the laws of the universe, that joy is always matched equally to pain and darkness. Whatever falls down will rise back up in equal measure. The more darkness we walk through, the greater our capacity to hold the light. We are light workers and healers, being asked to heal this earth and each other from the roots upwards to the heavens. I know that you will learn to find JOY and laugher and light in the tiniest cracks that slip through the dark, you will learn how to laugh at the joy of a flower. You will learn how to hold yourself and give yourself the love you need with the emotions need to be released, and you will find the cracks of freedom to dance naked under the light of the moon and swim in the ocean without fear of judgement. I believe in you and I believe in us, I know this is not going to be easy.. but you know your life has prepared you for this exact time in history. You are right where you need to be, and I am here to be with you in any way you need.
Setting The Stage
/
Every good story has a beginning, a middle (or an arc), and an ending.. nice little arcs of these fairy tales and parables I have heard from my youth.. a closure. a resurrection. a triumph in the face of evil. something to hold onto, something that makes sense in our linear minds.
Maybe that’s why it has a been hard for me to put this never-ending journey I have been on into a nice little written fairy tale for myself (and anyone else) to digest. The truth is, life is not scripted and the storytelling rules I learned in AP English just don’t seem to hold up to the triumphs and heartache that come along with life.
Not sure exactly where to start, because I have been actively living out this crazy story.. and I find that in re-telling this tale I cannot write a half-truth. The bravery comes in embodying the story fully, living to tell it, telling it honestly and throwing away all of the rules.. because who says a story has to be beautiful only if it’s wrapped in a beautiful little box with a happy ending? This is a story of finding beauty OUTSIDE of the lines, of complete surrender, of survival and of creativity in the face of continued pain that feels like death.
I have chosen to start this particular story of my journey to California with the breakdown of my body that started sometime in September. These breakdowns seem to have their way of catalyzing my trajectory in a continued higher vibrational frequency, into more understanding, into more of my heart and my intuition.this is always found when I have to be entirely by myself - in and out of surviving the unbearable pain my body puts me through... which comes at no surprise why this journey cannot and has not made logical sense to most who are witnessing me walk through the fire..why I have not tried to ( or felt the need to) explain my decisions as I have made them, and why I have tried to only operated from the place of knowing within my heart (because if I operate outside of that I literally feel it in my body and I start to operate in the world from a place of fear and need instead of love and wholeness within myself) while combining all the creativity and research and logic I found as I navigate this coffin my body puts my spirit inside.
As the cycle as always been in the past, I pushed myself to the limits of my physical capabilities from March-September of 2018. After leaving a relationship, building a new home, nursing my grandmother through death and burying her, and my photography business completely dissolving after my fiasco in the psych ward/detoxing from anti-psychotics… I gave everything my body had to building up my life again. Without any photography work, I came back to Savannah from my grandmothers funeral and started working 4 different gigs to make ends meet- all physically taxing.
I am proud of myself for how much my body was able to handle AND how hard I worked to ground myself emotionally and spiritually during this season of my life. This is another story, but all this to say I pushed myself very hard to make ends meet while also trying (and succeeding) in living and rebuilding my life again in Savannah- independently. I felt safe again in my skin and in my home for the first time in YEARS, and it helped me release so much trauma and emotions I was suppressing inside of my spirit. Last Spring, Summer and Fall were some of the most freeing and beautiful seasons of life I have had in a very long time. I found myself and my soul again, and the water and moon helped me heal.
After a beautiful summer, my sister and I simultaneously both had a week off of work at the last minute in September. We were both itching to travel, itching to get into the mountains and into nature so we jumped in our cars and met each other in the Smokey Mountains.
I wanted to test and see if I could comfortably camp out of my element, while Taryn camped out of her tent most nights. We traveled around the backroads of the Blue Ridge Mountains, hiked, spent time by the campfire and had more precious conversations than I can count. I pushed my body hard during this trip to keep up with Taryn on the trails, it was difficult for me to sleep out of the element and the extensive driving and difficulty of camping really did a toll on my body. The emotional weight of the physical pain caught up to me several times on this trip, which was a hard thing for me to be vulnerable about with my sister.
Taryn went back to Nashville, and I had another few days off work so I thought I’d hang out in the mountains a little longer- without much of a plan, trying my hand at trusting my intuition on this journey. I found a hostel called Standing Bear right off the AT, and made that my destination.
On the road to Standing Bear, my brain stem got pinched and it sent me into my third dystonic (we think this is what it’s called) episode. My body was weak, I was tired and hungry and had been driving on a bumpy road for hours, which triggered the jarring in my brain that sent my body into a state of pain and panic. My neurological symptoms spiked, walking became extremely difficult and it was a wake-up call that I needed to get to a neurologist who specialized in neurological manifestations of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome ASAP : Dr. Henderson in Chevy Chase Maryland. I was given a reprieve for a week at the Hostel, long enough to get my strength back up to drive towards Maryland as I also tried to set up the doctor appointments that I needed. I guess, looking back I was a little too hopeful that it would all work out and I’d get the support I needed immediately and had no idea what kind of fight I’d be facing over the next year.
The Little Engine That Could
/
After restoring my body with rest and waiting out a hurricane at the sweetest Airbnb called The Blue Horn in West Virginia, I packed the dogs back into the car and made my way back to Savannah to find that all the roads leading home were flooded. We slept in the element one last night and returned home the next morning to a busy work schedule. Over the next 3 months (September 22-November 23rd I would somehow shoot 8 elopements, two weddings and two engagement sessions while also working part time as a “house manager/personal assistant” for a family ( I had to quit this job after my body hit another breaking point on November 5th). I’m going back through my galleries and my i phone photo history to chornicle all of this, and I I just keep saying “how in the world did I do all of this while I was in the pain I was in? DAMN I AM SO STRONG THIS IS INSANE”.. because I really can’t explain or understand how I am able to pull all of this off.
I think the most fun thing for me here is to show you some of the photos I took first during this season of excruciating pain and instability, and then share with you photos and the story that was going on behind the scenes so I could muster up enough energy and strength to take these photographs and provide for myself.
All these weddings were shot in Savannah, Georgia last fall. I am so grateful to my friend Miles and my roomate Dayna for helping me bear this load and keep my business rolling WHILE also living with me and the pain I was facing. TRUE FAMILY.
Behind the scenes and behind the camera, things were extremely unstable in my body and I spent most of my free and functioning time on the phone with social workers and lawyers and the insurance marketplace to try to secure myself insurance. I also put a lot of effort into getting orders for flexion and extension CT scans for my Cranial Cervical Joint.
An image taken the day of my first September wedding
After pushing my body hard to continue working my day gig and shooting weddings (by this time I had shot the first 8 elopements through Elope To Savannah and one engagement session), my body told me she just couldn’t take anymore on October 1st, so I quit my job and my roomate Dayna and I went to Fort Pulaski in Savannah and she took these photographs of me. They are the most beautiful representation of the pain I face in my body, and the sweet relief I get from the ocean.
On October 3rd, I decided to make an appointment for an saline IV infusion at a new infusion center close to my house in Savannah. My segway ride two blocks over sent me into another dystonic episode which started as soon as I rolled in the front door of the infusion center. These “episodes” look a lot like seizures and are extremely scary to experience as well as witness. First my neurological system gets overloaded from my brainstem down, I feel my body slowly welling in vibrations until every muscle head to toe starts spasiming. I experience EXTREME cognitive dysfunction and speaking clearly becomes extremely difficult while I am standing. From there, I usually get extreme pressure in my brain and my lower back and the back of my neck feel like they are catching on fire, my orthostatic intolerance kicks in and I have to immediately hit the ground and lay as flat as I can. The “seizure like” shaking doesnt stop, but once I get on the ground I am able to speak clearly and logically.. which is hard for people witnessing these events to understand. The pain is unlike anything most people will ever experience.. it’s enough to send your body into shock.
While this episode was happening in front of the entire staff of the infusion center, I was not given any help or anything from the staff except " you are not allowed here, we are not here to treat this, you obciously have a drug problem and we are going to call the cops.” I was stood over by the staff while this episode happened and was told that if I did not find someone to come get me within 15 minutes they would kick me out. I am clear enough to state what is going on with my body, that I have a genetic connective tissue disease and that this is NOT drug related and DO NOT CALL an ambulance. People have a hard time understanding what does not make logical sense.
I drug myself from the entryway floor by myself to the waiting room couch two rooms away and immediately called every safe person I knew. My cousin Elena picked up the phone, and her boyfriend Noah dropped everything and came to my rescue. He carried me out of the infusion center, drove me home and carried me up our stairs safely to my couch. My best friends Mackensey and Keli made it over a few hours later, and were shocked to witness the state of my physical health and to hear how I was treated. As horrifying as this experience was, I am so grateful it happened because it was a wake-up call to many of my friends that I really did need more help and more support and that I really really need medical attention. They started to join forces with the community and Savannah Community Acupuncture jumped on board and hosted a fund raiser for me that would later be exactly the amount of money I needed to pay for the CT scans I needed for my brain.
Continuing to try to stabilize my body while working proved to be extremely hard. After that traumatic episode, I had a few days to rest and shot an engagement session and a wedding the following weekend. Three days later I’d shoot another big wedding an engagement session the next week and had enough energy to hang out with some friends who came into town. After pushing my body to do all of this during the month of October, I had another dystonic event in Forsyth Park on October 29th (which was also extremely terrifying, and my friend Miles came and rescued me), and one the following night at home. I woke up the next day and decided to try to go to the Emergency Room.
I called the doctors I knew and had hopes they would meet me at the hospital and help usher me in for the testing I needed, but it proved to be another traumatic and disheartening hospital experience. My neighbor Hannah literally princess carried me into the emergency room, and her and Miles did their best to help the physicians understand the severity of my condition and were met by an undereducated medical staff. Trauma after trauma after trauma after trauma.. and somehow I just kept pushing on. It would take another month for me to get a doctor’s orders for the CT scans I needed to get into see Dr. Henderson, and that month proved to be one of the hardest I had yet to face.
Jesus is a Butterfly by Adyashanti
/
“ A caterpillar has the possibility of transforming itself into a butterfly, but until that transformation occurs, caterpillars are ground dwellers. They can climb up into a tree, but fundamentally they are limited to the horizontal domain. A butterfly can fly in the air; its sense of reality is completely different. A caterpillar can imagine what it’s like to fly, but it can’t experience flight until it undergoes that transformation. In a sense,Jesus is a butterfly. He’s a totally different order of being. Everyone he encounters is a potential butterfly, but to change, they furst have to let go of everything they know, their entire sense of who they are, and their entire sense of who God is. Unless they do this, they cannot come up to the order of being that Jesus represents. To make this transformation, they must be clear; they must know what they want and be willing to step into a completely unknown dimension of consciousness.”
A beautiful excerpt from “Resurrecting Jesus” by Adyashanti
