Griet Van de Velde

On observing, letting go and learning to trust herself.

I didn't become this woman by chance.

I became her by trusting myself.

I was seventeen when I started studying photography.

Young.

Uncertain.

Entering a world that felt bigger than me.

Photography school was competitive.
Home wasn't always easy.

And everyone else seemed to possess something I didn't:

confidence.

But there was something I already knew how to do.

I observed.

I always had.

As a child, my teachers called me a dreamer.

Looking back, perhaps I wasn't dreaming at all.

I was paying attention.

Watching.
Remembering.
Seeing.

Growing into myself

For a long time, I thought confidence belonged to other people.

Life gradually taught me otherwise.

Working at a contemporary art museum opened up my world.

I met artists.

I travelled.

I created opportunities.

I learned.

And somewhere along the way, almost without noticing,

I began to grow into myself.

One journey changed something in me.

Cuba.

I learned Spanish.

I found what felt like a second home.

And years later, something I had once only dreamed about became real:

my photographs were exhibited in Havana.

Letting go

With time, I learned something else.

That most fears are much bigger in our minds than they are in reality.

That not everything needs to be controlled.

Not everything needs to be known in advance.

And then life asked something much harder of me.

To continue without someone I loved deeply.

My best friend.

My soul companion.

The person who believed in me when I still struggled to believe in myself.

Before he died, he told me:

“Creo en ti.”

I believe in you.

Trusting myself

After he was gone, those words stayed with me.

But eventually, I had to learn to give myself what he had given me.

Belief.

Not the loud kind.

Not certainty.

The quieter kind of confidence that comes from knowing I can move forward without knowing exactly where everything will lead.

To trust what I see.

To trust what I feel.

And increasingly,

to trust myself.

“Creo en ti.”

Perhaps those words mean something different to me today.

They are no longer only something someone once said to me.

They have become something I can say to myself.

I believe in you.

And perhaps that is what growing into yourself ultimately asks:

not to become fearless,

but to trust yourself enough

to go anyway.

Griet Van de Velde
Photographer
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