Card 22 · Femessence Series · 2022
Creation
Age 30 · French background · Vaginal birth: No
She had struggled with this part of herself in ways both physical and emotional — repeated imbalances that left her feeling something was wrong, shame that had quietly accumulated over years. She came to this portrait not from celebration but from the need to find her way back. What she was looking for was a new angle. A way of seeing herself that hadn’t been available before. She found it in colour, in art, in the act of looking at herself through someone else’s reverent eyes.
“I see something else now — I see beauty, I see sacredness, I see natural art.”
From discovering masturbation as a teenager but not knowing what it is, keeping it secret and developing a form of shame about it — to my first candida colonisation that triggered dislike, fear, and shame toward my vulva and vagina. I am finally coming back to my femininity, its source rooted in my body, learning to take care of it and to honour it as sacred wisdom, slowly learning to receive pleasure and appreciate it.
I had no idea about doing it before you opened my eyes to the beauty it is and the wisdom it holds. I thought being able to look at it from another angle and with different colours, as a piece of art — mother nature art — would help me reconcile with that part of my body.
Yes, I think so. I see something else now — I see beauty, I see sacredness, I see natural art.
To her teenage self
Take the time to talk to your body — all the parts. Explore them with kindness, care, and love, and without shame.
Creation is the generative power at her centre. This portrait is where she found it.
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.
