In 2022 I moved to DC after closing my barbershops due to COVID. Soon after my move, I would meet Dame Sadie, Founder of Sadie’s Apothecary. She is a somatic practitioner who centers the “healing, wholing and holding" of Black Women and Femmes.

Within a few conversations, I saw where her desire to serve community and my own could overlap, with a focus on healthy community, even if only one individual at a time. Only months before our meeting, I’d began creating my own self recovery program for individuals that are seeking more of themselves and having a hard time finding those pieces. (more on that later)

As I witnessed how she worked with individuals bodies, showing them how to care for themselves beyond external fixes, seeing such a strong response to her techniques, I took it upon myself to begin documentation for Dame as well as the community as a whole.

Initially, we worked together around the Washington, DC area, and since 2022, we have traveled and worked together to record these stories and experiences abroad, such as Ghana, Johannesburg, SA, and other countries. As we travel and show up before different audiences, I collect images, sometimes creating videos to make sure this work is recorded for informational purposes, if nothing else..  As 2026 approaches, I see the work building, and I am grateful to witness our global communities experiencing a new version of themselves loving themselves in new ways.

As a photographer, visual documentation is extremely important when seeing things for the first time. Watching all types of bodies that have been oppressed more than celebrated allow themselves the space and opportunity to surrender to the permission of caring for themselves will give us all new information.