We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kathleen Marie Rose. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kathena below.
Kathleen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Wow. First I’m not sure where to begin. Knowing Lizzy recommended me I am sure it was related to my photography work. And may it be known that this is one expression of my mission in this life.
Ultimately I am devoted revolutionary with a purpose ; here to make love, to make art; to share beauty + magic with the world. I am here to remember and to remind others too, the love this all is, the nature we all are. To me life is art, poetry. It’s all yoga, tantra. A living mythos, a play of union, a dance of integration. Within and without, we are here to evolve + expand our capacity to know love, in every unfolding wave of our unique becoming.
In short, I am a Renaissance woman (or Regenaissance woman😏). My devotion is to self, collective and earthen realization/actualization. All for the prayer of living a beautiful, integrated, interconnected life, in intimate relationship with it all. Life, Nature, is my teacher. My guru. My medicine. My beloved. I make art, tend earth, weave community, I teach, mentor, lead, guide, write, sing, dance, weave, pray, play, live — in reverence to the human journey of remembering wholeness, to the intimate dance of nature and soul, for the liberation of Life.
There are many ways I show up for beauty, in service to this world. Since 2008, I’ve devoted myself to multiple studies and practices in wellness arts, earth arts, community arts, mystic arts, and performing arts. I am a Integrative photographer, an embodied liberation mentor, a certified yoga and meditation teacher, a folk herbalist, a professional permaculturalist and garden designer, a community leader and weaver, a visionary, a healer, a feeler, an artist, a writer, a graphic designer, a dancer, a singer, a student and devotee.
Ultimately, I am here for this Great Remembering (that is also the Great Awakening), taking up my right, “many-hatted” roles in order to steward a revolution, an evolution, within self and culture. We revolve to evolve.
By tracking cycles and patterns, through the seasons and stars, I weave my listening into teachings, creative projects, and community and land stewardship. Through cultivated practice, intuition, and the wisdom gained from my studies and life experience, I guide and inspire others to experience more of themselves. — To remember the medicine we each uniquely are. To remember magic and beauty, even in the seemingly mundane. To remember what it feels like to live as the fullness of life’s Animacy. To remember what it means to truly Become in Beauty.
Simply by sharing what’s helped me to remember too.
My Photography Business, True To Essence was birthed through a journey of weaving my passions for self-realization and creativity in the world. It was a surprise to me, becoming a professional photographer. In the early 2010s I had began my path of true self-discovery, deepening my practice of yoga both on and off the mat. A friend of mine, Jonathan, and I would get together annually, at least once a year for several years to create together. Getting in front of his camera was a playground for me, it was a playground for us both. The space we co-created was magic. I began to use the annual sessions as check-in opportunities with myself and as catalysts for my prayers of becoming. I would meet myself in each session like I did on the yoga mat — in truth, in rawness, in mystery, with intention. But instead of it being a mostly inward practice, I played with the edges of being witnessed in my truth and in my prayers, in my exploration of self and my own embodiment. And year after year, I felt myself grow, I felt myself become those prayers. I watched as I matured and embodied my true nature more and more, shedding masks, again and again and again. And I had these photos to refer back to, to see myself and also see how I see myself. There were times we’d look through the photos after a shoot, full of so much excitement and creative inspiration and among so many incredible photos, I’d come across some where I’d judge myself. Sometimes, those photos would be Jonathan’s favorites. Before I’d even have a chance to make a comment about it he’d say something like, “yes, this one!” I questioned his sanity at first, “What?! I look like bird…” or whatever story I’d tell about myself. Then, after time, I noticed that the photos he loved, they weren’t random. There was a seeing of my own beauty that he could see that I hadn’t been able to see before. This is how I fell in love with my side profile, after years of rejecting myself in that angle. I received so much of myself in these sessions and in the reviewing of the photos after. Even still I look back and I can feel these parts of my chapters of my own becoming and the subtle initiations these shoots were for me. Subtle yet pivotal. The photos are memories and they are also rememberings. I remember the freedom, the creativity that is my true nature. I remember how I came to be the me I am now. I could see that even though year by year there was all this growth and changes, there was an essence of me that never changed.
Photography is a tool for self-actualization, for self-realization, when approached with awareness and intention. My buisness True To Essence is inspired by my journey with Jonathan. I was always a creative and played with the camera most of my life. But it was the medicine that photo shoots had gifted me that inspired me to get behind the camera myself, so I could support others too in remembering who they are, where their magic lives, how beautiful they are, and to give them these visual artifacts to deepen their self love and remember this remembering.
True to Essence is one thread of a web for this mission of self-realization, collective-realization and earth-realization. I weave yoga and mindfulness, embodiment and self-reflection into every session, I additionally weave in the Earth and nature, the elements and invite my clients to PLAY with creation, to be mused by the world and to trust their inner knowing and their inspiration. I create a safe space for others to be witness in exploring their own edges of being and becoming.
There are many other things I offer to this mission, including circles, classes and local community projects (such as ONE|Local, The Mystery Works, Wild Harvest Company) and for now — this is where I will end the story.
Kathena , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
(Also in the last prompt I answered and,) ::::: Integrative Photography Sessions by True To Essence by Kathena Marie – This is more than your standard photo shoot. I believe photography to be a tool for Self-knowing, self-remembering, A kind of self-study for self-realization and self-actualization. When held with intention for healing, it can be a beautiful practice for self-acknowledgment and self-compassion. An opportunity to see and know more of you from new edges and perspectives, and new lenses. To meet different aspects and flavors of your Self. To know the Truth of who you are in new stages of your ever-unfolding evolution.
Integrative Photography Sessions are an invitation to remember the pure, raw beauty of what it is to be human made of your unique soul and flesh and bone. They serve as an opportunity to deepen in self love, self acceptance + self celebration. To witness yourself in the embodiment of the natural expression that is you.
In sessions, we hold the intention for the photo shoot as a prayer and invoke play to co-create visual beauty from your inspired naturalness. Connected with the body and the elements, you are encouraged to be you, and unfold to your truest, most authentic self. Together we explore what it is to trust the unfolding and co-create an experience worth remembering.
It’s my personal experience in front of the lens that inspired me to get behind it.
About a decade ago, or so, I began seeing photography for its depth of potential. I started using modeling as another kind of awareness practice, a tool for self-realization (like yoga) — not just as a fun way to make art (that too though, yes.) My friend Jonathan & I would shoot once a year, for years; and over years, I watched myself grow. There was so much healing in it for me, in every step of the way: within the session, reviewing the photos, returning to the photos again and again.
The whole experience was a kind of medicine. I used the session as a playground to explore myself and the new edges of my own embodied expression. Playing between feeling and emoting “what is true right now” and also leaning in to be myself as the woman I desired to become. This was the medicine. I had a stage to play with my self-actualization. I had a new mirror to see myself through. A new lens and perspective to trust that wasn’t just my own, and thus see new angles of my own beauty that I’d never accepted as beautiful before. I touched new opportunities to meet, and love, and be seen in new, and forgotten, and hidden aspects of self that I had never allowed myself to before.
Overtime I began to love myself more. Overtime I began to see the ESSENCE of who I am in it’s pure unchanging nature, while simultaneously see all the ways I’d grown and matured. Overtime I could feel a deeper embodiment of who I am, a maturation in the knowing of myself within the journey itself, and in that, an integration of my own wholeness.
I didn’t expect to become a professional photographer. But a few years ago it called me. I knew I needed to share this simple, potent medicine with others. Because to me, photoshoots are so much more than pretty pictures ~ the whole experience is an opportunity to know and love yourself more. It is a playground for self discovery. It’s art. It’s medicine. It’s liberation.
Aside from the uniqueness of my work all together, I offer both Traditional sessions and Experiential Sessions.
Traditional Sessions are much like your classic photoshoot and, they are truly unique as there is much intention that goes into it. The experience, in essence, is simple, and also quite powerful. Like in all practice of self-study, if you create a pattern with them, you’ll notice the greater magic they have to offer. Each session is one-of-a-kind and emergent. It is you and your unique desires, prayers and intentions for this chapter [in the mythos] of your life, that brings shapes to the unfolding of each emergent session.
This is a co-creation. Together, we invite the elements, the truth of your aliveness, and the muse within us both, to guide and inspire us in play as we co-create an experience of beauty together. The experience is for more than just you, your brand, or your love, it is a journey to meet yourself. It is a journey to feel yourself in the prayer of your own heart. Who are you now? Who do you get to be more of? Growth and maturation are essential for wellness of both self and collective. So rarely do we have a playground just of our own, a stage to be witnessed in the journey of knowing-oneself. So rarely do we have another lens to be a mirror to reflect back on, to see ourselves, our beauty, our magic, our hearts through.
On the other side of the journey, you are handed image artifacts to celebrate that beauty and love yourself deeper, remember your expansion, and become your prayers.
The invitation is to become. Become your self, become your dream.
Each session is an opportunity to stand at the edge of your own self-acceptance, to lean into the expansion of your own Aliveness — and be witnessed there.
The opportunity is self-initiation.
When we open ourselves to the oracle of all Life and to the truth of our emotions, magic happens. In being real and honest with the edges you feel in the journey of being witnessed, healing happens. In leaning into the edges of becoming the embodied expression of your desired maturation, growth happens. This is the invitation. Freedom. Integration. Love.
Experience sessions are particularly crafted to evoke a specific kind of an embodied, emergent experience. Here, I’m combining your Traditional photo session with different tastes of mentorship-like experiences. Each session has a different arch + ride to invite you into the exploration of new edges/aspects of Self — all as a means to create + integrate more love & liberation — in relation to earth, pleasure, expression and truth.
We go deep. We take risks. We open to what is real + true. And trust the beauty in Life as it is. All for the sake of being ourselves more, seeing ourselves more, knowing ourselves more, loving ourselves more — experiencing ourselves more. Like a Traditional photo session — I will be your photographer and your guide. Only rather than mapping a journey soul-ly based on your unique intention, this ride will incorporate various tools, prompts, modalities + practices to support you in evoking the embodied journey you so choose.
There are 6 types of Experiential Sessions — One With Nature, Archetypal Play, Full Spectrum Human, To Love Thyself, Empleasured Being, and Transformation Gateway.
And I have designed a mentorship container to take you through them all, with the Transformation Gateway beginning and ending The Journey. The Journey, taking you through these Experiential Sessions, will run in Spring-summer 2025.
(((((((((((( If I missed anything lmk, trying to not be redundant — there is a lot I could share )))))))))))
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In many ways my much of my life journey is a demonstration of my resilience. I founded yoga in 2008 and began on this path at age 17 as a high school senior in my freshman year of college. That first college yoga course was supposed to just serve as a gym credit so I could graduate high school (as part of the program I joined to go to college my senior year), but it changed my life forever. From the beginning the world around me resisted the path I devoted myself to. At that time, back in the North Shore of Boston, MA, the wellness world was very underground. While I was learning how to regulate my nervous system, the culture around me was living that hustle, running on dunks. My journey just deepened and began to get more intense, but through my devotion I was determined to find my way through.
I experienced my first spontaneous Kundalini Awakening in 2009 which lasted two weeks. This experience changed everything and I began to feel even more isolated from my family and peers, and even my teachers. Most of my family thought I was weird as I started to pause and breath more, I triggered some friends and scared others with my silence, my teachers met me the best at the time, but even they didn’t have the answers I sought at the deepest layers of my soul. I found comfort in books and authors like Ram Dass, Mary Oliver, Eckhart Tolle, Iyengar, and had to learn to surrender in ways no one else could teach me to. Layer by layer I accepted that my path was going to be an experiential and experimental one, as only God and the Mystery herself had the answers — my teacher, my guru was Life itself. I spent years diving into wellness arts, earth arts, creative arts and community leadership. I tended the earth, studied and taught yoga, gathered community, led circles, shared herbal medicines, taught so much of what I was learning — served as president of the environmental club, and on student government. I got involved with local businesses and politics. I was active, alive, aware. The collective around me grew and still, the dominant culture around me challenged me often.
My passion was a spark that lit up some and threatened others. I gifted all my time to the movement I felt building around us. My dad would get angry and tell me often that I needed to make money and that I could not work for free all the time. This has been one of the major pain points in my life journey. Split between building a new world, and learning how to fit within a world I never felt resonant with — to play the game of capitalism. In 2015 I was living out of a van (at least as my bedroom) for most of the years, road-tripping from East to West coast and around again with my ex-partner whom I dated for 8 years. Returning to MA for the garden season and traveling west and south for the winter. Juggling how to remain in my devotion to my mission while also paying the bills with clever, soul aligned ways as I refused to get a job that would kill my spirit. I found myself in moments of pure panic and scarcity, yet found God and trust and initiation every time I’d wonder if I would be okay. I prayed and meditated and taught my nervous system to trust in the abundance of life’s majesty, and more often than not I’d receive everything I need in more in the exact right time, as if by magic or miracle. This happened enough times that I began to trust that life is truly working with me. Year after year after year. I found myself in the same knifes edge in various chapters — finding my way through, wondering how I would weave my devotions and passions together to support this mission in a way that felt inspiring and soul aligned, to serve the world, it’s people and the earth, and still have all of my resources met.
Moving to Boulder in 2018 was the beginning of the past 7 year chapter. And I found, since my arriving, so much activation and, in many ways, a continuation of the start of my journey. Boulder humbled me though. I found myself surrounded by leaders and professionals, influencers and teachers, so many incredible humans doing incredible work for the community, the earth and the world and in many ways, fell to my knees. I began to feel imposter syndrome and questioned my own authority on the things I felt most passionate about — while at the same time, I showed up and leaned in and served. I began to recognize my youthfulness and became a bit smaller, for years. Listening more than speaking, serving behind the scenes more than leading in the spotlight. I became involved in multiple communities doing revolutionary work. And I still shined. More often than not receiving many compliments of my embodiment, of my light, of my wisdom. While those first several years since that first yoga class I spent healing on my own, with God and earth, still of course met in many ways by my beloveds, I spent the past several years doing the healing with and through the collective field, weaving the freedom I found with self, Mystery, earth, integrating it all, and learning to trust a community to really meet me in those depths I had once so longed for.
At this moment in my life I see the all these threads weaving closer and closer and closer. Self-actualization, collective-actualization, earth-actualization all unfolding before my very eyes at the sweet pace of nature, as we spiral through the cosmos. I am watching prayers that I’ve kept watered and tended over years and years, coming to be. I have arrived home to myself, again, and again, and in ways I would have never known were possible all those years ago when these prayers began. I am watching my own dreams unfold before me and collective dreams weave into being too. I am a woman now who feels centered in knowing and trusting herself, alone and in community, both following and leading, I feel whole, even as I honor the continued journey of my healing. I am serving the world with my love and my art, and I am creating consistency in my monthly income without compromising my mission nor my health. I have strengthened in courage and can find and be peace in chaos. And I know that I am forever practicing, forever learning, forever aligning and refining and coming home to myself, deeper and deeper, richer and richer, ever-connected to, ever-expressed as, the Life that moves us all. And I get to offer a glimpses of the magic I have received from this journey as service to the community, as he are woven into every experience I offer.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
The most simple answer is my embodiment, my devotion, my prayer, my seeing of beauty.
My brand is called Become In Beauty, to which True To Essence Photography is a branch of.
In relation to this branch of my work, True to Essence: In the photography industry there are many photographers who shoot behind the camera because it feels safer, they’re not wanting to be seen or it feels uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong with loving to stay behind the lens. AND I stand out as a photographer because of how I express myself as a human. And because I know what it feels like to stand at the edges of being seen in my true nature, even when it feels scary, vulnerable, raw. Because of this, you can feel in the photos the comfortability of the clients, you can actually see their essence shining through their expressions and how they have been captured through the camera. Even when I am hired to shoot events, they choose me because they know I will be a part of the experience, I encourage others to feel free to be themselves because I feel free to be myself. I shoot always in prayer and weave in the prayers of those I create with, creating a space of trust and my portfolio reflects the beauty I see.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.becomeinbeauty.com, www.truetoessence.com
- Instagram: @kathenamarie, @truetoessence
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathenam & https://www.facebook.com/truetoessence
- Youtube: @kathenamarie
- Other: @kathenamarie on Threads, https://open.spotify.com/user/kathenamarie on Spotify
Image Credits
True To Essence