Testimonial

While I was working on my breastfeeding personal project a few years ago, a poem slowly grew in me, written in Italian.

This is the translated version, which became part of Milk Tales, a book of photography and stories from 25 mothers, including my own.

I never shared the poem publicly, until now.
Part one of three. Follow for more.

Nobody tells you that the last weeks of pregnancy are also the last weeks of being just you.

You’re not quite a mother, yet. But you’re not quite yourself anymore either.

Somewhere in between, carrying a whole person you haven’t met.

This is the photo of the woman you were, right before.

Before the sleepless nights. Before you start disappearing, just a little, into someone else’s story for a while.

If you’re in it right now, I’d love to capture it for you.

Nobody posts the days that just get survived.

The just-getting-through ones.

Some days, surviving is the whole job.

This one is for those, wherever you are with that today, could be personal, could be work, could be everything at once.

No advice today. Just, I see it. Keep going if you can.

Before her shoot, she wrote something I haven’t stopped thinking about.

She said seeing herself differently might help her realise that parts of her are seen and accepted, maybe even liked, for what they are, despite the internal narrative she tells herself about them.

And you know what? She is not the only one.

We see ourselves so differently than others see us.

That gap is where this work lives. I’m not trying to make anyone look like someone else. I’m showing them what was already there, just from outside their own head.

And that image becomes a print. Something to hold, not to just scroll past. A different mirror.

If you’ve never seen yourself the way others do, this is your invitation.