It’s no secret that I have a thing for tiaras. I have an ongoing collection of portraits featuring them, I collect them, I pour over photos of them when I am feeling down.
For my birthday, my studio sister bought me one. It’s. So. Gorgeous. Another one of my studio sisters bought me a gorgeous glass box to display it in and they gave it to me together at a surprise party they all threw for me with my husband. I donned it, immediately…. and have literally every single day since, even if it’s just while I edit. It was light hearted and fun at first. Here I am, nearly in my 30s with 4 kids, wearing yoga pants and a stunning jeweled tiara. But as our conversations kept going, I let them in on this thing I do.
Tiara Tuesdays. Yup. Every Tuesday I bust out one (or more) of my tiaras and I wear it. Sometimes for a portion of the day. Sometimes for the whole day. It’s just a thing I do.
In my job, I work primarily with women and children. We play, we laugh, we cultivate beauty, and it’s SO crystal clear to me what my purpose is when I’m working: I’m here to empower and inspire.
Day after day, I do what I can to pursue that. Sometimes, I get SO focused on everyone else’s potentials, strengths, and beauty that I forget about my own. Its an incredibly common ailment of women now-a-days and something we have in common more often than we think.
So I wake up on Tuesdays, look in the mirror, and put on a tiara to remind myself of what I am, and what I do.
I am a queen who rules her life, and I inspire others. Do I NEED a tiara to feel this way? No. Definitely not. But the visual representation gives me smirk and passing by the mirror makes me feel just a little bit extra on an otherwise boring Tuesday.
I’ve been photographing a series of portraits featuring tiaras for a couple years now, and every single image is a self portrait of my soul. So when my studio sisters gave me my tiara, Tiara Tuesday came up in our discussion and, to my surprise, it escalated.
Now, almost every single one of my studio sisters owns a tiara. I used to just wear mine at home, quiet and shyly self empowered. And then my studio family found out.
And it was JUST like them to feed this little quirk of mine. They fed it. They became inspired by it.
I think it means something just slightly different to all of us, but the end message is the same: you’re a queen. I’m a queen. And collectively, we can build each other up and be just a little bit more than whats expected of us. I see your beauty, you see mine, and we can be inspired and empowered by each other. I have your back. You have mine.
I didn’t quite realize it when it was just a little Liz quirk I did in the safety of my own home, away from judging eyes and old people who have lost their sense of being fabulous, but now that I’ve seen my studio family building each other up with this, I can’t stop. Every woman deserves a tiara. Every woman deserves the wordless solidarity we share for each other’s strengths, divine feminine, and the determination it’s taken us to rise from the ground time and time and time again and continue being the queen we are.
Tiara Tuesdays. It’s a thing.
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