We all carry within ourselves a behind the scenes life story of adversity. For those of us that have figured out how to overcome it, we transform our stories into our life purpose and become mentors and experts on the subject; we use our personal experience as a tool to help and share with others how to overcome their adversity like we did.

The deck of cards I was dealt with was dealing with low self/esteem/worth issues that needless to say it has led me to make some poor choices and left me feeling, drained, depleted, small, powerless, isolated, and unhappy.

My breakthrough point came after I left my last unhealthy relationship and decided that I was done with the pain and making poor, safe life choices.

I became committed to figuring out what was the root cause of my choosing, how to heal, and overcome it.  Ironically, at the same time I was working on my new website to include this new concept I was developing called Phototherapy®.

The idea behind it is that the root of all healing starts with a healthy relationship with yourself.

You must first love and accept yourself and then expand it outwards into the world. As I was piecing together the images and affirmations for my website, I began to self-heal and piece my life together simultaneously. Now that I bounced back, I found my empowerment, my joy for life, my freedom, my self-respect, my self-love, my worth, my value, my fearlessness and I refuelled my passion.

Through some deep introspection, I realized that the root cause of my pain was in fact linked to feelings I felt during my childhood years and I’ve been carrying this poison in my soul that kept me a prisoner to misery and a magnet to unhealthy relationships and poor choices through way too many adult years. I finally woke up from my misery coma, and was ready for a full recovery. I set my soul free and took full responsibility for attracting this relationship into my life and for the poor decisions I have made along the years. I also forgave all the people involved including myself, realizing that they also have some unresolved pain and hurts and are still suffering unawarely. Lastly, I made a commitment to honour love and respect unconditionally my relationship with myself.

I can honestly say that I gained so much more than what I gave up. This is not the “poor me/victim” story, with the sad ending.

This is but my journey of how I became a brave girl who took her life from powerless to empowered and created a tool combining my talents as an edgy photographer with her own signature style and my love to inspire and coach people to thrive through their adversity so they too can feel empowered and create a happy life.

Growing up I always LOVED the “rags to riches” stories of how people went from absolutely nothing to achieving the lives of their dreams. I now feel like one of them. I can say that I wake up each morning with a smile on my face because I get to use my GIFT to bring out the best in my clients’ self-image. By creating photographs that help them feel empowered and good about themselves, I can bring true value to their lives and help them thrive. This is, quite simply, just priceless to me.

-Pazit Perez