07/23/2024
One year without my mama.
The woman who gave me life, the woman who brought me into this world. one whole year without her love, one year of accepting that she’s not just a phone call away anymore, one year of not being able to feel her arms wrapped around me on my best and worst days, one whole year of learning what it means to love someone so deeply it can cause physical debilitating pain.
See, the thing about grieving is that there is no manual. Some days you will feel peace, some days you will feel anger, some confusion, some love, some happiness, some deep, deep sadness and it will run so deep it will bring you to your knees, but you have to get up again because life never stops moving, work doesn’t disappear, your kids have school, your dogs need to be fed, your partner needs you to cook dinner tonight, the bed hasn’t been made, the walls are caving in and you need to get up.
And you do.
You get up, you take one step out of bed, you brush your teeth, you eat just a spoonful more than you did yesterday, you take the walk down the driveway, you sit in pure silence, you suffer through the discomfort, you face the hardness head on and walk through a wall of concrete like it’s a field of flowers and you find a little more peace each day and then you grow.
The pain doesn’t subside, it never goes away but you keep going because if you were up there looking down on her, you’d never want to see her sad.
Every reason you got up, every reason you kept going, she is all of those reasons and what a beautiful reason she created.
All of my reasons of being me are because she was her.
She is my reason for it all. I love you my angel.
While I was out in Colorado photographing a wedding on the one year anniversary of my mama’s passing, I decided to do a photoshoot to memorialize my mama and celebrate another year of life being that her anniversary and my birthday are just days apart. Thank you for so perfectly bringing my vision to life I will forever hold these so close to my heart.