"I never in a million years saw myself doing a boudoir session at this point in my self-discovery journey, especially before my surgery to repair my diastasis recti. The confidence I gained through this experience took the pressure off the timeline in my head, and I felt sexy without having to change anything…"
Shoshana said this during one of The New Sexy coaching calls, as the participants were sharing their wins.
My mouth dropped to the floor.
When I first spoke to Shoshana in October, I remember one of the first things we worked on was having the confidence to take a walk around the block and go to social gatherings without worrying what other people were thinking of her or which comments they might make about her appearance. It was a significant goal because it was something that she had experienced often throughout her life.
A boudoir session was not even on the table at that point, and neither of us thought that it would’ve happened so soon after she started my group coaching program - or at all!
Just over a month into The New Sexy, Shoshana declared, “I’ve decided to do a boudoir session. Actually, I’d like to do a few of them so that I can document my self-love journey over the next year.”
“What?!” I exclaimed.
I had already seen her show up so bravely and fully for herself through this process, so I think I was just more excited than surprised. Being a part of Shoshana’s journey has been so beautiful and eye-opening, even for me, and I’m honored to be able to share part of her story.
In Shoshana’s own words…
“I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my body, but it’s taken many years of coaching and insights looking back to realize that this didn’t necessarily have to do with my weight. I discovered this about ten years ago, after working hard to lose all of my baby weight after having kids and finding that I still wasn’t happy with myself, despite being at the 'ideal' size. I was still listening to the diet culture noise around me and felt stuck.
Intuitively, I knew that I had to dig more deeply inside myself and get to the root of it, but I wasn’t quite sure where to look for help with this kind of mindset work. A few years went by, I gained quite a bit of weight back after a horribly stressful year that presented me simultaneously with mourning the loss of a parent and getting multiple children diagnosed with special needs all during the COVID lockdowns.
In 2021, I joined a virtual health program and was thankfully able to start nourishing my body and learning to love exercise, but I still needed extra help specifically with body positivity.
Through the work I had done physically in the program, I discovered that I have a condition called diastasis recti (DR), which happens to all women during pregnancy, but a small percentage of women are not able to close the gap in their abdominal muscles postpartum. Basically, it makes women look pregnant when they aren’t, and the more weight they lose, the more pregnant they look, constantly receiving hurtful, insensitive comments from everyone around them, which will knock anyone’s self-esteem to the ground. I knew I could, in theory, get surgery to correct this, and I probably would at some point in the future, but in the meantime, my primary focus had to be on self-love.
That’s where Rebecca came in…
I had been following Rebecca on social media for quite some time due to my desire to do a boudoir session…
I thought, “Someday, way off into the future, when my life and my body are perfect.”
Then, she started The New Sexy program, which specifically focuses on all the pieces of my puzzle that I had been missing: improving body image, ignoring diet culture, and truly being yourself without caring about what the outside world or the scale says.
I knew deep down that I had the key to unlock them, but I had to find it, and I had to do it before any desire to do boudoir would ever become a reality, no matter what my weight was or what my body looked like. Once that realization hit me like a lightning bolt, all of my fears disappeared, and I sent Rebecca a message asking to be added to the next round of The New Sexy, not knowing when that would be or that our collective world was about to be turned upside-down due to the war in Israel.
Going through the program, I think the biggest thing that surprised me was how quickly I was able to reverse a lifetime of unhealthy thought patterns. I was only about a month into my work with Rebecca when I decided to go ahead with my first boudoir session — and I say first because there will definitely be more! The DR was still there and looking more and more prominent with every pound I lost in order to have surgery for it, but for the first time in my life, I was truly not self-conscious about it.
At that point, I already knew that I would look glamorous no matter what and I needed concrete proof that I could indeed actually look as sexy as I pictured myself in my wildest fantasies, where nobody’s opinions were weighing me down, and I was free to be myself.
Through The New Sexy and my Healing Boudoir Experience, my self-confidence has soared, even in areas of my life that have nothing to do with body image. It’s become so much easier to ask for and get what I want and need out of life. Additionally, I’ve learned to trust my own intuition and ignore the biased noise around me because I know that nobody can truly know what is best for me other than me.
I want all women to know that a person’s weight or body shape has absolutely zero to do with self-confidence or authenticity, and those are the sexiest things in the world.
The most important person who needs to love you is you, and that all starts with your mind.”
Makeup and Hair by Rhonda Lev