HEALING OUT LOUD began with something I couldn't keep carrying like the grief and the stigma I experience and sometimes create within myself. I've lived my whole life as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person and this project is the ongoing and very confronting process of unmasking. 

My approach is based in therapeutic photography techniques and self-portraiture. Each image begins with a feeling I am sitting with and the act of creating it is part of how I move through it, so the photograph is both the process and the outcome. My work is intuitive as I follow what the moment is asking of me and let the image reveal itself rather than forcing it into shape. 

This is a bridge for anyone still trying to make sense of their own mind, navigating a world that accommodates them in theory but not always in practice while it is also asking viewers to look closely, beyond the familiar scripts of media portrayal to ask questions rather than assume. I believe stigma thrives behind closed doors, closed minds, and closed mouths, but the moment we start to speak, we open the door to understanding, and with understanding, inclusivity will follow.  There is a tendency, when navigating the world as a disabled person, to manage other people's discomfort and to frame our lives in ways that reassure rather than challenge. But doesn't discomfort have its own accountability?