The day I came out as a mermaid.

The wet sand was hard and freezing cold — so cold that it seeped deeply in my bones.

Shivering.

It was a cold February afternoon and I was lying on the sand at Hendry’s Beach being photographed …

It was after I had just left my corporate job to stay home with my daughter and begin building my business, I had this amazing supernatural experience with … a mer-being. I’ll save those details for another day and jump right into the message that this being told me.

“Get photographed as a mermaid.”

Ok, how weird is that?

It took me two weeks to muster the nerve to reach out to my photographer and dear friend, Rachel Sarah Thurston, to ask her to photograph me as a mermaid.

She just laughed. She had been obsessed with mermaids for two weeks before I even called her.

Total goosebumps.

We knew we were meant to work on this project together. I was so excited to begin and Rachel matched my energy and desire to manifest the vision.

I showed up for my shoot with unmanicured toenails and fingernails; I hadn’t even shaved my legs! (I was, after all, going to hide them inside my phony tail.) My stomach was bloated from premenstrual water retention and a night of gorging on…