Clinging to hope

I have been obsessed with pictures and the stories they tell for as long as I can remember. As a kid I was constantly making a mess of my mom’s rubber made containers of pictures. I spent so much time scouring and asking questions about the pictures in the depths of our basement, I could probably still tell you about most of them to this day.

A lot of people probably already know how I stumbled upon the camera, but in case you’re new here, I’m going to tell the story again.

I was always the kid with the camera, the kid who saved her money for film! As a result we have so many random (and some inappropriate haha) things about our life documented. It’s so fun to pull them out and find things we had completely forgotten about.

With my high school graduation money I bought my first DSLR; a Canon Rebel XTI and I was hooked.

Then, as it does, life got in the way. I had bills to pay and no time to play. I gave the camera to my mom and set about being a grown up.

In December of 2015, almost 5 years ago to the date, my best friend was killed in a car accident. That single moment shaped me forever. She was a mother, like me, to two very young kids only months apart from the ages of my own kids. She was this amazing, eclectic artist, and she was the bravest person I had ever known. And she was suddenly just gone.

I felt like so much of myself died right alongside of her. We had been fighting when she died and hadn’t spoken in three months. Just the week before she died I told Zach that our fight was stupid and I wanted to make it right with her before Christmas… and I never did.

The guilt was all consuming. I hated myself so much. I struggled to find any beauty in my life, struggled to get off the couch, struggled to put the wine down, struggled to face my day to day. It got to the point that I could hardly look at my kids for the amount of guilt and shame I felt. I thought they deserved better than me. I hated that Shannon’s kids wouldn’t remember her when she was such an amazing mother, and mine were stuck with me who couldn’t even appreciate the life she had.

Then one night, bottle of wine beside me, Zach working midnights and gone for the night, kids in bed, I started browsing Instagram, trying to numb my loneliness.

Somehow I stumbled upon Joy Prouty’s page and her work took my breath away. The way she saw her kids, the honesty in words, her perspective, all of it was exactly what I needed to see. I was inspired for the first time in almost a year.

I told Zach the very next day that I wanted to buy myself a camera, to see if I still could love taking pictures. He was probably desperate to have his wife back and agreed to let me spend so much money, “just to see.”

What I saw was the beauty of my life.

Looking through that viewfinder I found hope. I saw love. I watched the way my people cared for me. How my husband patiently, and without judgement, continued to draw close to me as I pushed everyone away. I noticed my kid’s fatty little knees, and the hair on the back of their necks. I saw the light for the first time in so long. I watched it through the windows, played with it in the backyard, and slowly, I started to feel that light inside of me whenever I picked up my camera.

I remembered that it wasn’t me who died, even though it felt like it sometimes. I remembered that I had dreams and goals and for the first time in a very long time, I decided to go after them.

We ended up buying an old 1983 slide in truck camper. The next two summers were spent in that camper. We got our family back. We talked through hard things in lawn chairs, being eaten alive by mosquitos, while the kids slept in the shared twin bed inside the camper. We traveled as much as possible over the next two summers and started dreaming together again.

These pictures are from that time. Just me and a camera I hardly understood how to work, playing around with my kids, remembering who I am and what I love to do, traveling, actually living and noticing my life again. And it all started with my camera.

These pictures to me, represent hope. Most of them aren’t technically correct. Some aren’t even a little bit in focus. But that didn’t matter to me at all. I look at this collection and all I feel is that surge of hope. I see these and remember the pride I felt finally figuring out the exposure triangle after playing for months. Or the first time I created bokeh and I got teary because I had been trying to figure it out all day long and my kids were being so kind and patient with me.

My wish is that you, too, can find a little bit of hope this season. Whether that’s a little self love, or forgiveness. Maybe it’s remembering who you are and what you love. It could be picking up an old hobby or starting a new one. Or maybe it’s none of those things and it’s just a hard conversation you’ve been putting off because it can be scary, but you know it is a step toward healing what’s hurting or broken. My wish is that you find some hope to cling to even if things look bleak and you are drowning in grief or things feel really hard and it maybe seems like you’ve lost your way.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness — Desmond Tutu