I haven’t mentioned My Secret Facebook Group in a while because…well, everyone’s been going through Hell. We’ve had multiple divorces, loads of ill and ornery parents and countless belligerent children. The members of this group have spent far more time lifting each other up than sharing dirty stories lately and for that, I am grateful. Of course, someone always works in a juicy tidbit and this week, it was Marci.

Marci isn’t her real name but what’s a Secret Facebook Group if I’m giving up people’s identities? Anyhow, Marci decided she wanted to have some Boudoir Photos made. Evidently, a photographer-friend of hers asked if she’d be interested and she decided that YES, it sounded just dandy. Well, the rest of us did a spit-take with our Moscow Mules because we are mostly over-40 Moms. We’d rather get a weekly pap-smear than pose naked in front of a photographer, but OF COURSE we encouraged Marci to do so. The thought of someone else taking Boudoir Photos is insanely sexy (“Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack”) and we are, after all, huge fans of dirty pictures. So, we followed Marci’s journey of waxing and exfoliating until the big day.

Which was yesterday.

Marci got naked and let a man who isn’t her husband snap photos of her, but she also had an epiphany. Like all great epiphanies, she struggled to put it into words so I’m just going to post her comments here:

“While being photographed naked, getting to know my very sweet photographer friend, I listened to his stories about being riddled with anxiety, and about health care, and about relationships, and women with body issues and how we all should all be — and I don’t know, being alive, as a soul, occupying a body — I feel special today. We’re just breakable parts, and emotional pieces, and all trying to do our best.”

I loved that little jumble of words as soon as I read them. They made me think of tiny souls, waiting to be born, and how excited they’d be about being alive. But once they were, they started thinking about their imperfect faces or bodies, and then they started fretting over the things they’d never have and the people they’d never be. Those little souls got so caught up in the bullshit of life that they forgot how lucky they were. To be in skin. To be experiencing all there is to experience. To be alive.

Yes, that’s where dirty pictures of my naked friend brought us, and she shared one of them with us today. At first glance, it resembles the sloping dunes of a desert, shot in black in white. After closer inspection, you realize that it’s Marci’s beautiful, bitable ass. And now we’re jealous. Now we ALL might have to get some Boudoir Photos made, and not for our spouses or significant others. No, we’re going to make them for ourselves so we can look at them when we’re 85-years-old and say, “Look at me! Look how beautiful I was. Look how ALIVE I was!” And all of our little souls will smile.