I first met Courtney Barriere when she was a summer camp counselor at my daughter’s school. We chatted about our kids, the weather, and the exquisite beaches that define this stretch of coast. Then as you do with parent friends, I connected with her on Instagram, and saw a world I didn’t expect. Her feed was vibrant and fearless, full of striking portraits and dreamy wardrobes brought to life in visionary shoots.

The next day, I told her I wanted to work with her. Two years later, when we finally made it happen, I walked away with a deeper understanding of who she is as a person. That’s what I aim for with every session. Instagram can easily trick us, after all, into thinking we know someone. But it didn’t take long before I knew Courtney belonged in this blog series. I knew that, when I asked her the questions, I wasn’t just going to hear about modeling, fashion, light, and a few favorite shoots. What I got was a conversation about courage, kindness, and the quiet, beautiful ways creativity helps us hold ourselves together when the world seems like it’s coming undone.

She told me right away that she’s passionate about two things: modeling and her son. “Modeling has become almost an obsession,” she said. “And my son… I mean those are my two passions in life.”

I knew there had to be more to it than the feeling of getting in front of a camera and seeing what comes out the other side. As she spoke, the connection between modeling and her son became clearer. Both keep her grounded. Both help her stay sober—six years and counting. Both are reasons to wake up and keep going.

“Being sober, I’ve learned to take life one day at a time,” she said. “And this year… I don’t know if I would’ve stayed sober after everything I went through if it wasn’t for my kid.”

Her son is four. She calls him a miracle because doctors told her she’d never be able to have children. Now, she says, he’s her anchor. Her reason. And, as it turns out, a bit of a charmer. “When I pick him up after a photo shoot, he looks at me and goes, ‘You look so gorgeous.’ It’s not even something I taught him. He just says it.” Her smile told me everything I needed to know.

I could tell that small compliment means the world to her. The path to self-acceptance hasn’t been easy. Courtney has weathered immense physical and emotional change in recent years. Self-image has been a battlefield. Modeling, she says, became a way to reconnect with herself and start believing the compliments, even when she had trouble accepting them.

“I never saw myself as beautiful,” she admitted. “I know I’m good on the inside. I pride myself on that. But physically, it’s still hard to see. Modeling has helped with that.”

She recalls some of her favorite shoots like beloved memories: a sun-drenched barn near Myrtle Beach with a basket of apples and a horse at her side. Or the dusky dreamscape outside an abandoned convenience store, where she wore a $2 thrifted dress and tied balloons in her hair.

“I love thrifting,” she said. “Half my stuff is thrifted. And then we just make the vision come alive. Usually, it turns out even better than I imagined.”

That drive—to create beauty from the ordinary, to transform a forgotten space into something radiant—keeps her believing. Believing in the work, in the compliments, and in herself.

“Honestly, I think modeling saved my self-image,” she said. “Sometimes, if you tell yourself something enough, you start to believe it. I didn’t believe in mantras before, but now I do. I tell myself I’m beautiful every day.”

But beauty, she knows, is only part of the story. What really lifts her up is the creative process, and the pride she feels in the finished product. The moment of seeing something she poured herself into come to life is what keeps her grounded in the philosophy she holds most dear: “Be kind,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing in life for me. That’s what I want to instill in my child. We need more kindness in the world.”

It takes positive energy and real self-confidence, and she doesn’t say that lightly. Her understanding of kindness has, in a way, been shaped by fire. When she was in high school, she witnessed her father’s survival of the 9/11 attacks in New York, though she didn’t know it at the time. It became a moment that rewired how she sees time, forgiveness, and the fragility of life.

“We didn’t know whether he was alive until 1 a.m.,” she said. “It changed everything. Ever since then, it’s been, ‘Enjoy today. Don’t go to bed fighting with someone you love.’ That’s what I live by.”

Her voice cracked as she spoke of her father’s actions that day. He had helped evacuate others and survived himself by sheltering in a car while debris fell all around. It was one of those moments that jerks you out of everyday monotony and reminds you that we all live closer to the edge than we like to think. Everything we love can shift in an instant, but maybe we can carry those moments forward and shape them into something better—into a conscious kindness and a deeper appreciation.

That’s what Courtney tries to do. She’s taken fear, doubt, addiction, and pain and turned them into a form of art she’s always admired. She uses her struggles to remind her to stay present and love freely and wholeheartedly. Her modeling is expression. Her motherhood is devotion. And her kindness is authentic and something you feel as soon as she speaks.

Like many of us, she’s still learning to see herself the way others do. But in the meantime, she keeps showing up in front of the camera, beside her son, and in the life she’s building one honest day at a time.

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Kind Light Charleston is an emerging professional headshot and personal portrait photography studio based in Charleston, South Carolina. I’m always looking for people to highlight in my blog, so if you know someone who shines a kind light in this world, I want to meet them! Reach out to josh@kindlightcharleston.com.