an unexpected lesson on conditioning from one email 📧

one email sparked this personal reflection on the limitations of societal conditioning & the freedom of living an authentic life.

I posted something on my Instagram this past weekend about an experience I had with a maternity photographer. To be clear, I’m not repurposing this because it sent me into a rage or anything like that. I’m actually grateful it happened because it woke up this piece of me I’ve been dying to put into words. It perfectly illustrated the topic I want to explore: the limitations of conditioning.

I emailed a photographer about getting some photos of “me and my partner, Joe” (specifically “partner,” I don’t vibe with the title “boyfriend” at our big age) before our baby is due in November. I signed it, “Adele Stewart.”

I received a proposal back from her addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, noting how excited she was to take pictures of my “husband” and me.

The language raised an eyebrow. Not that it offended me that she called us husband and wife (and apparently that Joe has taken my father’s last name), but more so, I was disappointed in her disregard for the intentional language I used, instead highlighting her conditioned way of thinking—anyone wanting to work with a maternity photographer is, OF COURSE, a married couple.

Just the week before, I saw someone post on Threads:
”MARRIED WOMEN: How long did it take to conceive after you started trying?”

~ as if to imply that only married people “try” to conceive intentionally. I looked at the original poster’s bio - it said something about being Christian and married. Right away, I knew how she had been wired to think. I resisted the urge to respond or react to her Thread because I told myself, “Hey, she told us exactly who she wants in her audience, and I can’t fault her for that.”

That’s how I felt about this photographer. I know she didn’t intend anything malicious or rude by it; it just gave me a clear insight into her conditioning around what “family” looks like.

I could’ve easily sent an email back correcting her that Joe and I aren’t married and to put some RESPECT on our names. I could’ve also sent an email back, playing up the bit by saying, “The husband and I would love to work with you - let’s settle on a date.”

Instead, I just told her we were going in a different direction. (To be fair, at this point, I am not sure that I want maternity photos.)

I don't mean to disrespect her; she takes great photos, but I didn’t feel the need to work with her or correct her because I honestly felt like I wasn’t her audience.

I told her exactly how to address me, and she ignored it to address “us” in the way that she was most familiar with—how she’d been conditioned to view her clients.

I’m not mad at her; she is certainly not alone in this conditioning. Perhaps I was the first unmarried mother-to-be to contact her and use the “partner” language so she didn’t know how to interpret it.

Many view “family” as a husband and wife and their children. We are hardwired by religion, pop culture, and our environments to believe that family - that life - must look a certain way.

We are so heavily influenced by our conditioning and what’s familiar to us that we often forget (perhaps, sometimes, by choice) that life is not black and white and that the road we take, believe it or not, is not the only one in sight. If it were, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” would be a very short poem that goes something like, “Two roads diverged in the woods and I took the one everyone else took, now here we are.”

Look - I’m not against marriage and the traditional path. Invite me to your wedding! I’ll buy you something great off of your registry, and I’ll be on the dancefloor all night (if my feet aren’t swollen from pregnancy and not drinking enough water).

Plus, Joe and I do plan on getting married—just not tomorrow. I knew I loved him from the beginning, and we talked about our eagerness to start a family, no matter what it looked like on some of our first dates. Personally, I’ve spent years deconstructing old beliefs to create a life of freedom and autonomy, letting go of what didn’t feel like “me” and focusing on what my soul has been craving. I did not want my family life to be an exception. I wanted us to have our own story.

Breaking Free From Conditioning

Conditioning comes with limitations.

In the Threads girly case, her conditioning quite literally limited her audience. There are plenty of unmarried couples who conceive intentionally, who could’ve weighed in on their successes or perhaps found common ground in their struggles.

The photographer’s conditioning limits who works with her. Many couples don’t use the same last name, or “my partner Joe” could mean “my wife or girlfriend Josephine.” I mean, I hate to go all woke here, but we are living in modern times. Not everything looks the same as it once did, and it’s on us, as service providers, to be up to speed with our changing demographics. This photographer could wind up losing work because of her oversight.

Think about conditioning in other areas, such as what “work” is supposed to look like.

“You must work a 9-5. You don’t have to like your job, you need to work one for health insurance and money.”

Because of this conditioning, we believe working ourselves into the ground and suffering from burnout is acceptable. So many of us limit ourselves from the freedom of living a slower, more balanced life because we were told our work had to look a certain way.

The thing with conditioning is that it doesn't take into consideration our individuality and the need for authenticity.

You cannot live an authentic, true-to-you life if you do what everyone else does. I don’t know the meaning of life, but I’m CERTAIN we were not all put here to play one big game of “copycat.”

We were born with self-sovereignty. This means that we get to choose what our lives look like—WE get to design it by hand!

Isn’t that so exciting??

When you can take a step back and question your conditioning — “Who said that?” “Where did that rule come from?” “Are there any negative consequences to changing my way of thinking?” — you begin to connect with your soul essence and reclaim your power, encouraging a life of free-thinking and soul-aligned action.

And oh, how empowering it feels to make decisions for YOU and what you know to be your best interest.

My partner Joe and I are about 90 days away from meeting our little man, and that boy will not suffer in love because his parents chose their own path.

In fact, he might even feel more of it, knowing we chose a path entirely out of compassion, authenticity, and wholeness. It is my hope that he will know flow, ease, and freedom of choice from the very beginning.

I am grateful to that photographer for opening up this conversation for me. Who really thought I’d make something spiritual and empowering from that? — and allowing me to recognize I am always, always, always on the right path.