What Time Cannot Take

For over 30 years, I’ve entered print competition. And each time, I find myself drawn not just to what scores well—but to what stays with you.

This past quarter, I entered six images into the Virginia Professional Photographers Association print competition. All of them did well. But one… stayed with me.

This one.

A portrait of a young woman who has been fighting breast cancer since 2019.

As she shared her story, I found myself quietly moved. With each layer she revealed, the image began to form—not just in composition, but in meaning.

Her journey began just before the world shut down. During a time when hospitals closed their doors to visitors, she faced so much of it alone. No mother beside her. No hand to hold in the moments that mattered most.

Think back to that time for a moment.

Now imagine walking through it in the middle of a life-altering battle.

She spoke of the loneliness. The fear. The anger. And the weight of fifteen surgeries since then.

But she also spoke of something else.

She is not the same woman she was before cancer.
Parts of that life are gone.

But what remains is powerful.

A quiet strength.
A deep awareness of time.
A decision to live each day fully—without waste.

She is still here.

And while the experience still lingers within her, so does her resilience.

As a mother, I felt something else just as deeply—the experience of her mother. To watch your child walk through something like this, and at times be unable to stand beside her… that is its own kind of heartbreak.

This image became that moment.

A mother holding her daughter—gently, protectively—while beneath the stillness lives a fierce and unyielding will to survive.

I am grateful I chose to share this portrait.

Because some images are not meant to be evaluated.

They are meant to be felt.

Hold your loved ones close. Life does not always give us warning—but it gives us now.

And sometimes, what matters most… is what time cannot take.

Thank you, Aubrie and Stephanie, for trusting me with your story.