I remember my life through little vignettes in my mind. One picture emerges and I can tell you a story about it. I thought I’d write in the blog things I’m most familiar with – those little vignettes. They are in fact how I come up with so many of the session ideas we create at the studio.
Many times a client’s story will ring familiar to a memory of my own. I build their story from similarities.
I believe that our life’s experiences affect the way we see the world around us. It definitely affects the way I customize the stories we create for my clients. And, oh by the way, I love to tell the stories.. 
Welcome to my life…
In April of this year my mother passed away. She was 95 years old. And she was a remarkable woman.
My parents were divorced when I was just 18 months old and my mother was suddenly a single working mom when it wasn’t so cool to be one. There were no programs to help a single mother raise her child and much of society frowned on her situation.
My mother never remarried. I was her reason for living. I think I always knew this in my heart. All my life I felt a certain amount of responsibility for her aloneness. My mother had been married to another man before my dad. Apparently they had tried for nearly 8 years to have a child but they weren’t successful. Mama always wanted children and I believe it broke her heart to think she might never have any.
Somewhere along the way she met my dad, fell in love, married and then I came along. Years later, when mama had to have a hysterectomy, I found out that she should never have been able to conceive. At a very early age my mother had developed an impacted bowel and in the 1940s the cure for it was to remove the part that had been blocked – leaving terrible scar tissue that basically choked her ovaries out and made her chances of getting pregnant about 1%. She didn’t know this and for years hoped for something that probably would not happen. But then, you see, God had a different idea.
At any rate, I tell you this to share something with you that brings tears to my eyes even as I write this.
When mama passed away, I eventually began to go through her things and I ran across a journal addressed to me. It was very old, discolored, wrinkled and a little faded. And it was full of stories, poems and song lyrics. I don’t know if she wrote them or if she just collected them over my life time.
On the first page of the journal she wrote: to my dearest daughter, my greatest miracle, my life, in these pages are my thoughts and dreams and memories. My heart and my life is full because of you. Always know you are a miracle to me.
Okay that’s pretty incredible in itself, but as I share some of the writings in her journal… Well, I just hope they touch your heart the way they have touched mine. (You might want to get out the tissues before you begin reading.)
Journal entry number seven:
In my daughters eyes, I am a hero.
I am strong and wise and I know no fear.
But the truth is plain to see – she was sent to rescue me.
I see who I want to be, in my daughters eyes.
In my daughters eyes everyone is equal.
Darkness turns to light and the world is at peace.
The miracle God gave to me to me,
gives me strength when I am weak.
I find reason to believe, in my daughters eyes.
And when she wraps her hand around my finger,
Oh it puts a smile in my heart.
Everything becomes a little clearer.
I realize what life is all about.
It’s hanging on when your heart has had enough.
It’s giving more when you feel like giving up.
I’ve seen the light – it’s in my daughter’s eyes.
In my daughters eyes, I can see the future.
A reflection of who I am and what will be.
And though she’ll grow and someday leave
Maybe raise a family.
When I’m gone I hope you’ll see,
How happy she made me.
For I’ll be there, in my daughters eyes.
- Kendall and the beach
We met Kendall at the beach for her senior session and she was simply awesome. The winds were blowing so hard – I was afraid they were going to blow her away but we love what we got. Hope you do too.
