I met Lani at a networking event and I remember noticing how elegant and professional and confident she seemed. I didn’t dare approach her for a long time, but eventually our paths crossed and I’m so grateful for it. My conversations with Lani have been so empowering and validating, such wonderful reminders that there are amazing women out there doing the hard work of standing up for other women.
Lani is a personal branding and confidence coach, and a dang good one at that. In her own words: “I teach clients how to be clear and genuine with their self message, working on their inner game and even coach them on the powerful words to speak so they can attract exactly what they want. I can also transform them on the outside with an image makeover, creating their signature look and brand, which makes their outside match with their confident and savvy self!
But for this shoot Lani and I talked about doing something DIFFERENT (you know, us creatives), something raw and unapologetic. And because it was really important for me to let Lani show up on her own terms, I asked Lani to write this post. Enjoy.
“The first time I got married, I was 15. Yes, you saw that right- not a typo.
My mom was married three times and she had three daughters. Each husband hurt her mentally or physically, but her third husband was a pedophile. We didn’t talk about what he was doing very openly, because there was no titles of who he was or a standard or culture of giving permission to talk of these things that happen in the dark. I just knew I didn’t respect my mom and I really wanted to get away.
Then my best friend connected me to her older brother and I fell in love- or at least what felt like love to a 15 year old girl. Their mother, who was religious, felt we should get married and that her church condoned such unions even though I was only 15. She easily convinced my mom to sign emancipation papers so I could get married in Utah, which was a state that allowed such marriages. And off I went, caravanning my whole family there for a backyard wedding in a distant relative’s house. But my whole world opened up- I felt like I was finally part of a real and normal family, but little did I know this was the beginning of me closing myself off from my feminine energy which included my sexuality and I adopted the standards of the church to measure my success upon.
It wasn’t until many years later that my mom died of cancer that I had the epiphany. I went to therapy because I could not grieve my mother’s death mainly because she never left the pedophile. In one moment, larger than life, I saw it all- the underlying oppression, the lies I was telling myself of my marriage and realized the only thing that I loved was my children.
In that instant, I knew I could never see anything the same way again because you can’t unsee what you now see. It was the beginning of a long journey to discover who I really was outside of the self identity that was given to me. Being an action taker, I filed for divorce. It was the worst moments of my life when I discovered that almost every friend I had, had connected their self identity to who I was in that life. I lost nearly everyone in my life when I chose myself. It was a huge catalyst and the turning point of which direction to go.
As life would have it, I met Tom and I decided to choose love- the love I dreamed of, but didn’t know existed. I married a man many years my junior because he was the one and I knew I could trust my intuition. I also chose to be courageous and to believe I could make anything happen.
When I started my business almost 10 years ago, it was all about Image and Style, but when I worked with my clients, I found out what they really wanted was confidence to be and do the things they were meant for.
I’ve always called myself a confidence coach, but until I spoke to Irina Negrean about the vision for this shoot, I didn’t know how much my sexuality ties into my deep confidence about myself.
Today, I do the work for my female clients to feel sexy again because I know with my whole heart that confidence starts from the inside out and being a sensual female unlocks your potential that only you can feel, yet when others describe you, they say, “there’s something about her..”
Huge gratitude to Irina Negrean for unlocking my story to share with you. This is her gift to women. My gift to you is that you can see something in this story that will resonate with you, to keep on doing the work to unlock your potential and find yourself again. “
HMUA @LaceyScheidel
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