Today we’d like to introduce you to Michaela Rai.
Hi Michaela, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
There were many times in the last fifteen years where I was barely able to keep my head above water —family estrangement, deconstructing from a high-control fundamentalist religious sect, parental addiction and mental health struggles, surviving severe birth trauma and my child’s illness, and the unraveling of an abusive marriage with someone I once deeply loved. I lost nearly everything I had built and cherished.
Amidst all this, I found my callings:
Accepting and documenting life as it is, full of ebbs and flows.
Creating safety for humans to be fully themselves.
Connecting us all to ourselves, our humanity, and the water.
I found that survival wasn’t possible in rigidity or isolation. The process of surviving required returning to my body, and reconnecting to my intuition. I went really deep: in healing, learning, and community and in Lake Superior. I’m now on 4 years of jumping in Lake Superior at least once a month, year round! I learned ways to create safety for myself and my body and others. I started (an ongoing process of leaning in fully, along with the fear.
I build safety into every step of the process of photography so your full peace and power can be present. We remember how we felt in our bodies when we look back at our photos and I always want you to remember this story, right here, right now, exactly as it was.
I’ve expanded this work within my facilitation and consulting and also, at What We Saw Collaborative: a place for womxn to find and create knowledge, community, and value for their dreams, lives and work.
For me, living again required experiencing life in ways that combated the disassociation. My work, in all its facets, has been carved out from lived experience.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My biggest challenges have been:
-Trusting myself enough to extricate myself from relationships and systems that were harming me and keeping me small.
– Believing that I can actually do this: That I could actually get to do work I love, make enough money, and be able to take care of myself, my children, and my community, well. This is still a constant struggle.
– I had to scale down and back up at least 4 times due to child illness, my own health struggles, Covid, and my divorce before I reached the place I am now where I can create everything I’ve held in my mind and heart all these years.
-Feeling alone…I have always wanted to do things a different way and that often feels isolating: I usually don’t know anyone who is trying to do the things I want to do, especially someone who has similar struggles.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I create safety around perception for people who I photograph and I am a fine art underwater photographer. My main work is Embodiment and Body of Water sessions for people who want to show up fully in their story, bodies, and work. I also offer photography for brands and locations based in and around the water.
I am a space creator and documentary focused storyteller. I want to show things as they really are, in all their beauty, and power. In order to do that, we have to tell the full story. I create safety around perception which means pre-session journaling prompts, phone calls AND time and space to move, breathe, grieve, laugh, rage, and more, in your session. “I think that’s also part of a focus I’ve always had, whether it was people or now the water—life is hard, and there’s so much beauty and there’s so much pain, and it’s just how it is. We don’t get away from it. And I never wanted to show bodies or people’s experiences as just one positive happy thing, because that’s just not the truth, you know? And so the same with the water, to see the darkness and the light at the same time has been really beautiful and very metaphorical.”
My fine art underwater photography began as a way to show people what it looks AND FEELS like to be in Lake Superior. The water holds so much healing, wisdom, and lessons that help us understand and move through life.
“To try to encompass the lake is such an enormous task. I was very intimidated by it for a long time.
I’ve always had a documentary focus to try to show things exactly as they are. I started with people, and saw that the camera is like an instant judgment. People automatically feel observed and they start moving their body differently. They start breathing differently. I noticed this, and my process has been developed to tell the truth exactly as it is, and to create an environment where people can show up exactly how they are.
A whole person is not something you can capture in a photograph. So I just shifted that perspective to the water—how do we show how it moves, the oxygen in the water, the rocks, the way the water moves over the rocks? I’m slowly seeing as I dive deeper into this project of working with the water, how it’s the same thing as with people, just shifting and trying to capture the different elements that make up the essence and the spirit of the water.” –
All quotes from an interview with Emily Levang https://mnartists.walkerart.org/art-water-and-reciprocity
I feel the most proud when I watch someone view their photos for the first time and I hear a version of, “Oh wow. That’s me. I really see me. That’s just really me in that photograph.” It’s usually accompanied by their face and shoulders relaxing and a smile and THAT is exactly why I do this. Life is not static, and no one who loves you sees you and your beauty as static. The same applies to my work with the water. When I see people start to breathe or hear, “Oh I needed this today” in response to a photo, my writing, or voiceovers/speaking, I know I’m doing what I’m meant to do.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Nothing is static. Not despair. Not exhilaration. Not fear. Not the dream. Not doubt. You don’t have to know what it ends up looking like.
Take one step in front of the other, and you will always know enough to take the next small step right in front of you.
Pricing:
- Embodiment Portrait Sessions begin at $795
- Body of Water Sessions begin at $2250
- Comprehensive Brand Water Stories begin at $4725
- Half Day Retreat Facilitation starts at $1650
- Finding Flow (for small teams) 12 Week Contract Consulting Services – Book a Call to discuss what you need!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://whatwesawstories.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelarai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaela-lemke/
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@michaela_rai
- Other: https://michaelarairivera.substack.com/s/body-of-water
