Card 24  ·  Femessence Series  ·  2022

Strength

Age 38  ·  Caucasian background  ·  Vaginal birth: No

Femessence — Strength, Card 24Femessence — Strength, Card 24Femessence — Strength, Card 24

She came to connect with feminine energy. She left more comfortable in her own skin — more at ease with her body, more willing to be seen without covering. Her testimony is spare and honest. She was not totally accepting before. She is becoming more comfortable now. That is the whole story, and it is enough.

“Everyone is so different and there is no one body type, shape or ideal of beauty.”

I chose this to connect with feminine energy. Before the artwork I was not totally accepting of my body. After the artwork I am becoming more comfortable being nude.

To her teenage self

Everyone is so different and there is no one body type, shape or ideal of beauty.

Strength is not force. It is the deep kind — found on the other side of resistance, when a woman stops fighting herself and starts inhabiting herself instead.

This portrait is part of the Femessence Women’s Celebration Series — a body of work by artist and arts therapist Caris Pepper honouring the sacred feminine through vulva portrait art. Each portrait in this series is becoming a card in the Femessence Vulva Portrait Oracle deck, coming 2027.