My Relationship With My Body, My Sexuality, Being a Woman… + Inherent Shame | Oceanside, California Boudoir Photographer

I’ve been unpacking my relationship with my body, my sexuality, and the complicated layers of shame that come with being a woman for as long as I can remember. But the last year cracked it all wide open.

For so long, I carried this quiet ache—the feeling that my body wasn’t mine. That it was something to be picked apart, judged, claimed, hidden, or punished. I don’t think that feeling starts in adulthood. It starts when we’re little girls, taught to be palatable, desirable but not too much, confident but not too loud, sexy but not asking for it. We absorb that confusing blueprint, often without even realizing it.

But nothing exposed the raw edges of those beliefs more than my last relationship.

Without going into all the details, I’ll say this: when you trust someone with your body, your heart, your safety… and they betray that trust through secrecy, lies, and their own unchecked wounds — it can fracture the way you see yourself. I spent the last 2 years (maybe more, honestly) feeling disconnected from my body, like I was living inside a shell that someone else had decided the worth of. My sexuality, my softness, even my confidence — it all felt hijacked.

But I knew I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t let someone else’s choices — their lies, their secrecy, their inability to meet me with honesty — define how I saw myself. So, I turned to the thing that has always grounded me: my camera.

I started taking self-portraits more frequently. I’ve always had a good relationship with myself and could step in front of the camera, especially when I was creating a little world for myself to fit into. But I wanted these to be different. I wanted them to be just about me. Carrie Anne. And overtime, it became… sacred. A reclamation. These photos weren’t for anyone else’s gaze — not for a partner, not for strangers, not for validation. They were for me. To see my body through my own lens. To remember that I’m powerful, sensual, beautiful, soft, complex — and that none of those things require permission or approval.

In that process, I also made the choice to explore platforms like OnlyFans. Not because I was seeking attention, not because I needed external validation — but because I wanted to better understand the space that, for me, had become tangled up with betrayal, secrecy, and unanswered questions.

When you’re lied to — when your body, your boundaries, your worth are treated like they’re negotiable — it shakes something in you. I never got the space, the reassurance, or the respect I deserved to process any of it within that relationship. So, I chose to create that space for myself.

Exploring that platform was never about proving anything to anyone else. It was about reclaiming curiosity. About facing the parts of myself that had been bruised by dishonesty. About reminding myself that I — and only I — get to decide how I express my sexuality, how I explore my body, and how I heal.

Of course, navigating that came with its own set of challenges. I faced the quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) judgments. I faced the discomfort of realizing how often women’s bodies are reduced to objects of consumption, how easily desire and shame get tangled together. I also faced moments where my body was spoken about or perceived through the lens of someone else’s insecurity — and that is never easy to navigate.

But here’s the thing: Showing your body does not make you a slut.

Exploring your sexuality does not make you desperate for attention.

Claiming space in your softness, your sensuality, your beauty — does not mean you are asking to be hurt, dismissed, or disrespected.

It means you are human. It means you are curious. It means you are done waiting for the world to tell you how worthy you are — because you already know.

So to any woman reading this who feels stuck between curiosity and shame… I see you.

To the women questioning their worth because of how someone else treated their body… I see you.

To the women learning that their sexuality belongs to them and no one else… I see you.

Take the photo.

Explore the version of you that feels mysterious, wild, powerful.

Let it be for you — and only you — if that’s what you need.

Because no one gets to tell you how to exist in your own skin.

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