WEEK 30 - The Feminine Rebrand
By Jennifer Dirksen · Sheer Photography, Youngstown OH · Est. read time: 5 min
You can love your life and still crave something bigger. Those two things are not in conflict… no matter what anyone has taught you to believe.
Here's something nobody says out loud enough: Wanting more doesn't make you ungrateful.
It doesn't make you a bad wife, a bad mom, a selfish person, or someone who doesn't appreciate what she has. It makes you a woman with a pulse. A woman who is paying attention to herself (maybe for the first time in a long time) and being honest about what she actually feels.
And that honesty? That's not something to be ashamed of. That's something to follow.
We have been so thoroughly trained to perform gratitude that we've confused it with contentment. We've been told that wanting more means we don't appreciate what we have. That if we loved our husbands enough, our kids enough, our lives enough… we wouldn't need anything else.
That's not gratitude. That's erasure. And it has kept a lot of women very, very small.
"You can love your life completely and still crave more from it. Those two things were never supposed to be in conflict."
The lie we tell ourselves every single day.
It sounds like this: I should be happy with what I have. I have enough. Other people have it so much worse. I shouldn't complain.
And underneath all of that (quiet, patient, increasingly hard to ignore) she's starving.
Not for things. For experience. For aliveness. For the feeling of being more than a function in her own life. For romance that actually feels like romance. For adventure that isn't just a family vacation she planned and managed and photographed and made memories out of for everyone else. For intimacy that goes deeper than the surface. For confidence that doesn't have to be earned or justified or earned again every single morning.
She wants more passion. More presence. More of her own life, lived on her own terms.
And she talks herself out of it every single time. Because wanting it feels dangerous. Wanting it feels like ingratitude. Wanting it feels like she's saying what she has isn't enough… when really all she's saying is: I am more than what I've allowed myself to be.
Wanting more doesn't cancel what you already love.
Let me be really clear about something because I think this is where women get tangled up the most:
Wanting more adventure doesn't mean you hate your life. Wanting more romance doesn't mean you don't love your husband. Wanting more confidence doesn't mean you think you're worthless right now. Wanting more intimacy doesn't mean something is broken. Wanting more passion doesn't mean you're dissatisfied with everything.
It means you're alive. It means you're honest. It means there is a version of your life that feels even more like yours (more expressed, more electric, more real) and some part of you knows it and won't stop knowing it no matter how many times you tell yourself to be grateful and move on.
You can love your husband and want more romance. You can love your kids and want more time that belongs only to you. You can love your home and want more adventure inside your own life. You can be deeply grateful for everything you have and still feel the pull toward something more.
That pull isn't betrayal. That pull is direction.
"Wanting more isn't ingratitude. It's information. Your desires are telling you something about who you are and what you need and they deserve to be heard!"
Playing small helps nobody.
Here's the part I really need you to hear… especially if you've been shrinking yourself for years in the name of keeping everyone comfortable:
Playing small doesn't protect the people you love. It doesn't make you a better mom. It doesn't make you a better partner. It doesn't make your home more peaceful or your relationships more stable.
What it does is model something for your daughters, your sons, the people watching you… that a woman's desires are optional. That wanting things for yourself is selfish. That the right way to be a woman is to make yourself as small and as accommodating as possible and call it love.
That's not what you want to teach them. And deep down you know it.
The most powerful thing you can do for the people you love is to want things for yourself and pursue them. To show them what a woman looks like when she's fully expressed, fully alive, fully inhabiting her own story. To stop shrinking and start showing up… for yourself first, and then for everyone else from a place of genuine fullness instead of quiet depletion.
You cannot pour from empty. But more than that, you shouldn't have to!
The question that changes everything.
I want you to sit with this one. Really sit with it… not skim past it on your way to the next section.
If nobody was judging you... what would you honestly want?
Not what you think you should want. Not what's reasonable or appropriate or what other people would approve of. What do you actually, genuinely, in the quiet part of yourself that doesn't perform for anyone… want?
Write it down. All of it. Even the things that feel too big or too selfish or too much.
Especially those.
What a boudoir session has to do with wanting more.
Everything. Literally everything.
Because a session at Sheer is one of the most direct acts of wanting more I know. It's choosing (out loud, with your credit card and your calendar) to prioritize your own experience. Your own feelings. Your own desire to feel something for yourself instead of always for someone else.
The women who book sessions aren't only doing it for their husbands. They're not doing it because someone told them to or because they finally hit a goal. They're doing it because something in them said I want to feel this. I want to feel desired. I want to feel seen. I want to feel like a whole woman… not just a role, not just a function, not just someone who keeps everything running.
They wanted more. And they chose it.
And when they walk into my home studio and we spend a few hours together (doing hair and makeup, moving through looks, laughing, talking, being fully present) something opens up. Not because I did something magical. Because they gave themselves permission to want something and then actually had it.
That experience doesn't stay in the studio. It follows you home. It changes how you carry yourself. It changes what you're willing to ask for. It changes what you're willing to settle for.
Wanting more is how it starts. Choosing it is what makes it real.
Your permission list.
I want you to actually do this. Not think about doing it. Actually do it.
Get a piece of paper (or your notes app, or the back of a receipt, I don't care) and write:
I give myself permission to...
And then finish it. As many times as you need to. Without editing. Without deciding if it's reasonable. Without asking if you've earned it.
Some of my favorites from women I've worked with:
I give myself permission to want more romance. I give myself permission to take up space. I give myself permission to be seen. I give myself permission to feel beautiful right now, in this body. I give myself permission to want something just for me. I give myself permission to book the session.
That last one is yours if you want it 🖤
The investment is smaller than another year of waiting.