What is freedom? What does it look like… or feel like?
Is it a person? Is it my body? A home, a belief, a way of feeling or thinking? Is it the absence of guilt, the end of self-judgment? Is it life itself or death? Is it expanding in love? I believe it is all of that and more… Something that can’t quite be captured in words...

In a world that constantly “defends” freedom, “protects” freedom, raises flags in its name, kills in its name, and where people fight every day to demand it as a right, freedom reveals itself as vast and full of contradictions. At times, I see it as a right that is denied, both physically and mentally. And yet, in the same world, I watch animals, plants, and the elements… beings who do not question freedom. They don’t think, they don’t judge. They simply are, adapting to their surroundings to remain free.

Every time I cross a border, when I step on the wound of Mother Earth (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa), when I move through fences and walls, I return to that question: What is freedom? I reflect on it when I see the wall dissolve into the ocean, when the water, indifferent, pushes past rusted bars, when I watch birds fly freely above the wall or rest quietly upon it. I reflect on freedom from the identities I carry, from the steps I’ve chosen to take to arrive where I am… especially from the moment I began to feel free, despite the physical and territorial boundaries I continue to inhabit.

Where does freedom begin, and where does it end?
For me, it begins in my heart, in my spirit — in the way I nourish my body, in the choices I make — and it ends the moment I infringe on the freedom of another. With this question in mind, I set out to photograph these women, each of whom, in her way, gave shape to freedom through deeply personal experiences.

For some, freedom means living without papers and still crossing borders — invisible ones.
For others, it’s feeling the vastness of the ocean, even without knowing how to swim.
For some, it’s inhabiting their bodies freely in natural space.
Some found it without searching.
And for others, it is the courageous act of letting go of fear.

At the end of the day, I seek liberation not only for those I photograph, but also for myself. To capture the intangible essence of freedom so it can live on in memory, so we do not forget those fleeting or eternal moments when we felt it. To remember that we can still grow and be free — even with walls — like a tree.

The more I heal my own wounds, and those of the Earth - of the body, the land, the mind - the freer I feel.
Freedom is not a destination. It is not a boundary. It is a constant transformation.
It is a return to the essential. A rediscovery of the girl I once was.
It is seeing the sea without the wall. Feeling the earth beneath my feet with no restrictions.
It is the landscapes I photograph, the women I meet, the body, the land, the mother who holds us.

Freedom, in the end, is an act of love. An act of being, without fear.