I am professional because I am authentically me. To hide who I am, what made me into this, or what truly fuels me to create would be tragic in my opinion. This is me, and whether you like it or not, is not in my control. Regardless, I will respect you for exactly who you are.
Is it really unprofessional to discuss my personal life? It's only as a matter of proper grammar that I put a question mark after that. Truthfully, if you don't want to hire me just as I authentically am, don't hire me. My company wouldn't exist if it weren't for me, my ADHD, my childhood abuse, depression, anxiety, and everything else that creates emotions so intense that they manifest in empathetic design and art. Being trauma informed is a a fancy way of saying that I give a shit. I've lived hard, and suffered at the hands of others, and I understand that I'm not alone in that, so I design for those other people like me. Guess what, most people are like me. We don't get older without having survived something, and doing it in our own way. We are all beautiful in our own way. We all deserve love, or at least, there was a time in everyone's life when love could have saved them from what they would become. We all understand that monsters do exist but they don't have scales and fangs. Rather, they come to you with beautiful smiles, and promises of your dreams come true. Look, I became WHO I am because I survived the most horrific, nightmare childhood, and early adulthood which anyone could imagine. I became WHAT I am because of my resilience, and resistance to let that shape me into an image of those monsters. As Marcus Aurelius famously said, "The ultimate revenge is to become unlike them who caused your injury". I spent decades of my life stagnating, and stuck, because I wanted to portray a "normal" person who functioned in normal ways, and came from a normal life. Those decades stripped away all that I could become. A great novel was never written by creating an ending and then going backward to build that story. Every building I design, or photograph that I take, is only beautiful because of the time and energy I give to understand where it is coming from. I share my life with the world. If someone doesn't want to hire me or become my friend because of that, so be it. My primary values are Authenticity, and Belonging. I look for others who will be who and what they are. I make sure those people know that they belong when they are with me, and I expect the same in return. My job and my life, are centered around making the intangible, become tangible. I don't want to design the building that you think you want, I want to help you create the building that you never dreamed was possible to achieve. I don't want to take a picture of you. I want to become enough of a part of you, that I can capture a moment in time where you are exactly and unapologetically you. This is how I define being a professional in my work.