Becoming Her. Chyenne Duarte.

Becoming Her: From Angel Wings to Fire

After brain surgery, hidden abuse, and starting over with almost nothing, one woman rebuilt a peaceful life for her children, found healing through writing, and reclaimed the story others tried to silence.

Client story shared with permission. Interview responses have been edited for length and clarity.

When I first photographed her more than ten years ago, neither of us knew how many chapters of her life I would eventually witness through my lens.

I photographed her engagement, her pregnancies, her children, and so many of the milestones that shaped her family. Over time, our relationship grew beyond photographer and client. We became friends, and I became one of the people she trusted with the parts of her life she was still hiding from almost everyone else.
In 2021, she returned to my camera shortly after undergoing NF2-related brain surgery to remove a tumor. She was living with multiple brain and spinal tumors, raising two children on the autism spectrum, supporting their individual needs, and quietly losing herself inside a marriage marked by betrayal and control.

No one knew the full extent of what she was surviving.

“I was functioning, but I was disappearing,” she says. “I was taking care of everyone else, but I could barely recognize the woman in the mirror.”

The Woman Beneath the Surface

She had learned how to smile while carrying pain no one could see. She could keep appointments, care for her children, navigate her health, and continue moving through the world even as her identity quietly eroded beneath illness, trauma, and secrecy.

She remembers avoiding mirrors.

Chy after brain surgery

“I used to turn away from them,” she says. “Or I would stare for too long, trying to catch a glimpse of who I used to be.”

When she arrived for that first boudoir session, her confidence had not fully found her yet. The photographs from that day carry a softness and innocence. There are shy smiles, gentle poses, and even angel wings. Looking at them now, it is possible to see both the beauty she carried and the things she was still hiding beneath the surface.

I could see the woman standing in front of me, even when she could not.

So I told her, “Let me show you what I see.”

The session did not change her circumstances. It did not erase the tumors, heal her marriage, or rescue her from everything she was carrying.

But the images gave her a glimmer.

“When I saw them, something shifted,” she says. “It did not fix everything overnight, but it reminded me that I was still there.”

Strong.

Beautiful.

Worthy.

“Val helped me see it before I could fully hold onto it myself,” she says. “She gave me the glimmer I needed.”

2021 - classic black portrait session with my handmade wings

The Year Everything Broke Open

A year after the session, everything she had been hiding finally erupted into the open.

She left her marriage and began again with almost nothing.

Freedom did not arrive as a clean, cinematic ending. It came with fear, exhaustion, uncertainty, and the daily pressure of creating stability for two children while rebuilding her own life from the ground up.

“I fought tooth and nail to get out,” she says. “There was no moment when everything suddenly became easy. I was parenting full time, and at one point I was working three jobs. I was trying to build a safe, peaceful, and stable home for my kids while figuring out how to survive myself.”

At the same time, NF2 continued demanding its own share of her strength. She underwent infusion therapy to treat the brain and spinal tumors she was living with, fitting appointments and treatment around work, parenting, and the relentless logistics of starting over.

But she kept going.

She worked. She parented. She advocated for her children. She went to treatment. She created routines and slowly transformed an uncertain beginning into a home defined by peace.

Her family and friends became a steady support system. They pushed her forward, reminded her who she was, and reminded her who had raised her whenever she began to lose sight of herself.

Still, the work of rebuilding happened one step at a time.

“Every day, I fought to put one foot in front of the other,” she says.

Her determination was rooted in something older than the marriage she had left. She had grown up knowing what instability could do to a child, and she was determined that her sons would not inherit the same story.

“I refused to let my childhood become my sons’ childhood,” she says. “I was going to find a way to give them a stable, peaceful home. Not the chaos I knew growing up.”

She had seen that kind of rebuilding before.

Her father had fought for custody, created safety, and rebuilt a life with his children after the instability of her early childhood. Years later, when she found herself trying to do the same for her own family, she followed the example he had left behind.

“My dad showed me the way,” she says. “I simply followed his footprints.”

Still Fighting Her Own Body

By 2024, she had finally made it out and begun building the stability she had fought so hard to create. But her health had not paused to let her recover.

Facial and eye nerve paralysis caused by her brain tumors had disrupted her vision, leading to two eye surgeries.

Even then, stopping rarely felt like an option.

“I would go back to work the day after surgery,” she says. “I needed to keep everything going, and using my eyes helped me start adjusting to my vision again. My brother would drive me during that first week, and then I would keep moving.”

It was not that she believed herself invincible. It was that she had children depending on her, a home she had fought to create, and a life she refused to surrender.

“I did not feel powerful every day,” she says. “Sometimes strength was treatment, surgery, work, parenting, and doing the next thing before I had even recovered from the last one.”

There was no single thing that saved her.

Her children gave her a reason to build something better. Her father had shown her what rebuilding could look like. Her brother helped her navigate the days when she could not drive herself. Her family and friends reminded her that she was not alone. Work helped her create independence. Stubbornness carried her through the days when hope felt too far away.

And writing gave everything inside her somewhere to go.

The Quiet That Became a Book

Writing had always lived inside her, but during the years of survival and rebuilding, it became a lifeline.

It held the truths she could not yet say aloud. The heartbreak. The betrayal. The rage. The secrets that had become deafening inside her silence.

“My first book is everything I was holding onto,” she says. “It is the quiet that was so loud in my head. It is my heartbreak and everything I had been keeping secret.”

On the date that would have marked her wedding anniversary, she released her first poetry collection, Happily Nevermore: Poems of Sorrow and Betrayal.

The timing was deliberate.

Rather than allowing the date to remain a monument to what had been lost, she claimed it as the beginning of something that belonged entirely to her.

She was not only reclaiming her voice. She was reclaiming the calendar itself.

From Sorrow to Defiance

She will reclaim the date again on October 30, 2026, with the release of her second book, Until Betrayal Do Us Part.

Where her first collection holds grief, secrecy, and heartbreak, the second refuses to submit.

“My second book is every scream I held inside,” she says. “It is every fuck you to everyone who tried to make me submit, disappear, or stay quiet.”

The collection draws inspiration from women in mythology and history whose stories were distorted by the people who feared them. Women who were betrayed, exiled, vilified, condemned, or reduced to names intended to make them monstrous.

Lilith.

Medusa.

Calypso.

Persephone.

Women branded as witches for refusing to become smaller, quieter, or easier to control.

These women were harmed, betrayed, cast into darkness, and then blamed for what they became there. But in her work, they are not passive victims waiting to be rescued. They claim the names they were given and reign with them anyway.

“My first book is what I carried in silence,” she says. “The second is what happened when I stopped being quiet.”

But Until Betrayal Do Us Part does not end only in anger.
It ends with escape.

“It ends with me staying true to myself and finding my way out of where I had been buried,” she says. “It is me clawing my way out and becoming the woman I was always meant to be.”

From Angel Wings to Fire

That transformation became the foundation for her return to my studio and her place as the first woman featured in Becoming Her.

The contrast between the two sessions is intentional.

The first photographs were soft, innocent, and almost angelic. The woman in them was beautiful, but still uncertain. Her smile was shy. Her confidence had not yet caught up with the strength she was already carrying. She was still protecting secrets and trying to survive without drawing attention to the fire beneath the surface.

The new portraits will not ask her to be innocent.

They will not ask her to be palatable.

They will not portray her as someone waiting to be saved.

This time, the imagery is inspired by Lilith and the betrayed women of mythology. It is darker, wilder, and unapologetically feminine. Lace, serpents, shadows, crowns, fire, and the energy of a woman who has stopped asking permission to exist fully.

“The first photographs captured a version of me who was still hiding,” she says. “These new ones are the opposite. I walked out of hell setting shit on fire.”

She laughs.

“They expected me to burn with my pain and heartbreak. Nah. I set shit on fire with the match they waved in front of me to intimidate me into silence. I owned my truth, and I made way out screaming it. My children and their children will know my truth will never be a buried secret.”

The fire is not about destruction for its own sake. It is the fire of truth spoken after years of silence. The fire of a woman refusing to carry shame that never belonged to her. The fire of boundaries, self-respect, and freedom.

She has also learned to forgive the earlier versions of herself.

“I have forgiven the parts of me that allowed so much disrespect and mistreatment from someone who called it love,” she says. “I understand now that I was surviving with the tools I had. I do not hate her for staying. She is the reason I eventually found the strength to leave.

The Woman in the Mirror

Today, she does not turn away from the mirror.

She sees the woman she once searched for.

“Now I see her,” she says. “Wild, free, rebellious, determined, and a badass. Fucking gorgeous despite what illness, trauma, and the years have taken away from me.”

Her life is no longer organized around someone else’s control or chaos.

She finds happiness in the quiet she fought to create. In a good book. In writing late into the night. In building worlds through poetry and prose. In creating memories and adventures with her children. In the ordinary peace of a home where no one has to brace for what comes next.

“This version of me does not care what everyone thinks,” she says. “I am happy in my peace. Give me a book, something to write, or an adventure with my kids. Those are my happy places.”

She is still living with NF2. She is still navigating the effects of tumors, surgeries, facial paralysis, hearing loss, and the ways illness has changed her body.

Healing has not made those realities disappear.

It has changed the way she sees herself within them.

Her beauty is not the reward she received after surviving. Her worth was not returned to her only after she left, rebuilt, published a book, or learned to feel confident.

It was there during every version of the story.

Even when she could not see it.

Becoming Her

This is the purpose of Becoming Her.

It is not about transforming women into more acceptable, polished, or desirable versions of themselves. It is not about waiting until the grief has passed, the scars have faded, the weight has changed, or life finally looks perfect.

It is about honoring women in the middle of becoming.

The woman who is rebuilding.

The woman who is grieving.

The woman who is fighting.

The woman who is exhausted.

The woman who has not yet found the exit.

The woman who has escaped but is still learning how to be free.

We all move through seasons that make us feel broken, undesirable, invisible, or unworthy. But hardship does not erase beauty. Trauma does not cancel worth. A woman does not have to complete her healing before she deserves to be seen and celebrated.

Years ago, I photographed a woman trying to survive.

Now I have the privilege of photographing a woman who has reclaimed the right to tell her own story.

"I am not the woman I was in 2021,” she says. “But I carry her with me. She kept going long enough for me to become this version of myself.”

A survivor.

A mother.

An author.

Wild, free, rebellious, and still becoming.

She did not burn with the story others wrote for her.

She became the flame.