A Little Bit About Me
The Woman Behind altogether beautiful.
Before I share my testimony, I want you to know a little about the woman behind it.
Hi, I’m Brooke! 🤍
I’m a mom of three, a grandmother, a veteran, a photographer, a dog trainer, a lover of horses, and a woman who loves Jesus. I’m also a woman who has spent her entire life not knowing who she is.
If you had asked me a few years ago to tell you about myself, I could have given you a list of things I did or titles I’ve held. I could have told you about my children, my dogs, my photography, and all the things I love. But I don’t know that I could have told you much about who I am. And the truth is, until recently, I didn’t really know either.
The Story Behind the Woman
Trauma and abuse entered my life at such an early age that I grew up not knowing life was ever meant to be different. The things I experienced and the ways I learned to survive became so deeply woven into my understanding of life that I had no way of recognizing just how profoundly they were shaping me.
One of the hardest truths I’ve had to face is that the trauma I experienced as a child didn’t just affect how I saw myself. It shaped the very foundation of who I believed myself to be. During the years when I should have been developing my own identity, discovering my thoughts, feelings, and desires, I was learning to anticipate danger, adapt to the people around me, and become whatever I needed to be to feel safe, accepted, or loved. Survival was the only thing I really had the opportunity to develop.
The abuse I experienced as a young girl was not the end of my suffering. It was the beginning of a pattern that would continue throughout much of my life. I experienced multiple sexual traumas over the years, and my life eventually led me into the sex industry, an experience I am only now beginning to understand in the context of what I endured as a child.
For a long time, I struggled to understand how I had ended up in so many situations and relationships where I was being hurt, used, or exploited. I couldn’t understand why certain experiences seemed normal to me when, looking back, they were anything but normal.
Through trauma therapy, I have begun to understand how profoundly childhood abuse can shape a person’s developing beliefs about themselves, their worth, and their relationships with others. For me, those beliefs became so deeply ingrained that I didn’t even recognize them as beliefs. They were simply what I understood to be true about myself and the world.
I had learned to associate love with harm, acceptance with meeting someone else’s needs, and safety with shrinking to keep others from getting angry. I didn’t understand that I had the right to boundaries, that I could have my own thoughts, feelings, or desires, that my body belonged to me, or that my worth had absolutely nothing to do with what someone else wanted from me.
Perhaps one of the most painful realizations of this journey has been recognizing how much of my life was shaped by things I never chose, never deserved, and didn’t even have the understanding to recognize as abuse.
Learning to Recognize My Own Voice
And for the first time in my life, I am learning to recognize my own voice.
For so long, my mind was so powerfully influenced and controlled by the voices of others that I never had the ability to distinguish their thoughts from my own. I was constantly being told, directly or indirectly, what I should think, how I should feel, what I should need, and even what I should want. There were even times when the very people who hurt me convinced me that I had no reason to be hurt, that I was too sensitive, that I had misunderstood their intentions, or that somehow I was responsible for the way they treated me.
And because the trauma began so early in my childhood, I had no real foundation from which to recognize or challenge what others were telling me. I had spent my life learning to adapt to the thoughts, feelings, needs, and expectations of everyone around me rather than discovering my own.
Over time, the voices of others became so deeply ingrained in my mind that I no longer needed someone else to question or dismiss my experiences. I had learned to do it for them. Their beliefs became my beliefs, their judgments became my judgments, and their explanations for why I shouldn’t feel hurt became the very explanations I used to silence my own pain.
I wasn’t simply struggling to trust my own thoughts. I was struggling to recognize which thoughts were actually mine.
And that’s something I’ve had to come to terms with throughout my healing journey. For me, healing isn’t about finding my way back to the person I was before the trauma. There was no before. There was no version of me untouched by trauma to return to.
Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking, yet hopeful, parts of this journey has been realizing that I’m not trying to find my way back to someone I used to be. I’m finally getting the opportunity to meet the woman God created me to be.
A Little About Me
Although I am only beginning to understand who I am apart from my suffering, there are things I’ve always been drawn to, things that have brought me joy and given me glimpses of the person God created me to be.
I’ve always had a heart for people, especially those who are hurting. I love animals, and some of the most meaningful moments of my life have happened in the quiet companionship of a horse or with a dog by my side.
The handsome black German Shepherd in this photograph is Drago. Dogs have been a huge part of my life, both personally and professionally. I’ve worked in canine training, detection, and search and recovery, and I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between people and animals.
I’m also a photographer. Photography has given me a way to communicate things that words sometimes cannot. I love capturing the beauty in people, the emotion in a moment, and the stories that can be told through a single image.
And I love writing. Putting my thoughts into words helps me make sense of the things I am learning, especially the truths God has been teaching me throughout my healing journey.
Recently, I made the decision to give college another try after failing out twice when I was younger. At 46 years old, I am pursuing a degree in Strategic Communication, with plans to continue my education in psychology.
Although I am still figuring out exactly where this path will lead, my hope is to become a trauma-informed educator, public speaker, and advocate for women and girls affected by sexual trauma, childhood abuse, and exploitation.
I want to combine my education, Christian faith, and love for writing, photography, and teaching to raise awareness, educate communities, and help women who may not yet recognize or understand their experiences. I want to connect survivors with the resources and professional support they need and, most importantly, help them find their own voices and recognize their worth.
That passion comes from a very personal place.
A Journey I Never Expected
Over the last three years, I have spent approximately six months in intensive residential trauma treatment at Honey Lake Clinic. Those months have been some of the most difficult of my life.
I have had to confront painful memories, recognize patterns I never knew existed, and begin untangling decades of confusion about love, relationships, safety, and my own worth.
There have been moments when the truth was so painful that I wondered how I would ever find my way through it. But there have also been moments of extraordinary clarity, when something I had believed about myself for my entire life suddenly began to unravel in the light of truth.
For decades, I lived with the effects of trauma without understanding how deeply it had shaped my thoughts, relationships, decisions, and beliefs about myself. I had become so good at surviving that I didn’t recognize how much of my life was being governed by fear, shame, and beliefs that were never true.
And somewhere in the midst of this painful process, I began to understand something that would forever change the way I see myself.
Learning to See Myself Through God’s Eyes
One of the most profound things I have learned throughout this journey is that healing isn’t about becoming someone worthy of love. It’s about recognizing that I was worthy of love all along.
For so much of my life, I believed that my experiences said something about my value. That somehow the things that happened to me, the places I had been, or the ways I had learned to survive reflected who I was.
But they didn’t.
And perhaps one of the most beautiful truths God has been teaching me is this:
God does not look at you as someone who needs to become worthy. He looks at you as His daughter who needs to be rescued from a place she was never meant to be, because she was worthy all along.
I cannot adequately describe what it has meant to begin understanding that truth.
For the first time, I am learning to sift through the voices and beliefs that have shaped my understanding of myself and recognize the difference between what others convinced me to believe and what God says is true about me.
I am discovering that I have a voice. That I am capable of thinking for myself. That my thoughts, convictions, feelings, and desires matter.
I’m still learning these things, and some days are much harder than others. But for the first time in my life, I am beginning to understand what it means to live rather than simply survive.
Why I Created altogether beautiful.
The vision for altogether beautiful. was born from my own story, but it was never meant to be only about me.
It was born from a desire to reach women who, like me, have spent much of their lives carrying pain, shame, confusion, and beliefs about themselves that were never true.
Women who have endured abuse. Women who have lost their voices. Women who have been made to believe that their worth is determined by what happened to them, what others have called them, or the choices they made while trying to survive.
I want to create a place where their stories can be told. Where photography and storytelling communicate the beauty, courage, and humanity of women whose lives have been marked by suffering. Where the truth of God’s Word challenges the lies that trauma so often leaves behind.
And where women can begin to understand that their stories do not have to end where their suffering began.
The name altogether beautiful. comes from Song of Solomon 4:7:
“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”
Those words have taken on an entirely new meaning for me. Because I am learning that beauty is not the absence of scars, and worth is not something we earn by becoming better versions of ourselves.
Our worth was never ours to earn in the first place.
Still Becoming
I wish I could tell you that I’ve reached the other side of healing and have everything figured out. But I haven’t.
I’m still working through the effects of a lifetime of trauma. I’m still learning to trust my own mind, recognize what is healthy, establish boundaries, and discover what I actually want my life to look like.
Some days I feel strong and hopeful. Other days I feel overwhelmed by how much I still have to learn.
But there is something beautiful about looking toward the future and realizing that, perhaps for the first time, I have the freedom to discover who God created me to be.
I want to write. I want to teach. I want to share what I am learning about trauma, healing, faith, and the extraordinary value of every human life. I want to use my camera to tell stories that might otherwise remain hidden. And I want the experiences that once left me feeling powerless to become part of something that helps other women find their voices.
I don’t know exactly what all of that will look like yet. But I am learning that I don’t have to know every step before I begin walking.
I’m Glad You’re Here
If you’ve found your way to this little corner of the internet, I hope you’ll stay awhile.
My prayer is that through the photographs, testimonies, reflections, and stories shared here, you will encounter something that reminds you of your own worth.
Maybe you’ll recognize a piece of yourself in someone else’s story. Maybe you’ll find words for something you’ve never been able to explain. Or maybe you’ll simply be reminded that the things you have endured do not define who you are.
I am not sharing my story because I have all the answers. I’m sharing it because I know what it feels like to spend a lifetime believing things about yourself that were never true. And I know how powerful it can be when someone finally helps you see the truth.
My pain was proof I never belonged there. It was never proof that I was unworthy of something better.
And if there is one thing I hope you take away from this space, it is that your story matters. Your voice matters. And you were always worthy of love.
With love,
Brooke
Founder of altogether beautiful.
Her Voice. His Glory. 🤍
